Moments of Grace - Season Four, Act Three: They Rise Up
by Parlanchina
Summary: Beginning to heal from the pain of the past and resolutely ignoring any unpleasantness from her present, winter has well and truly set in for SSA Grace Pearce. Fortunately, as usual, there's plenty of cases to keep her from dwelling, from a cop killer in Phoenix, horror in Orange County, double trouble in Florida and a madman with a healthy sense of irony in Oregon. AU COMPLETE!
1. Wood Smoke

**Essential listening: Winter Windows, by Sea Wolf**

 **0o0**

SSA Grace Pearce walked briskly across the frozen park, pleased at the satisfying little crunching noises that her boots were making on the ice-clad grass. She had been pleased, too, to find wild boar sausages at the little market outside Stafford Virginia, along with a plentiful supply of gingerbread, but both sensations had faded pretty quickly.

It was annoying, because ordinarily, this would be her favourite time of the year to browse the market – but this time she had gone round quickly, exchanging only a few words with each stallholder, and headed back as soon as she feasibly could, without indulging in the tempting mugs of steaming glühwein.

She scowled across the park towards the skeletal, frost covered trees.

It pained her to admit it, but the reason she had hurried away, far earlier than she ordinarily would, was because she was avoiding someone. It annoyed the hell out of her, acting like a scorned teenager, but the truth was, there were some things that she didn't feel like facing on her day off. She had enough of it at work.

Still, her house felt strangely empty when she got in, as though it had been expecting someone else to wander in after her, so as soon as she'd put everything away she pulled on thick, rough clothes and went out into the garden, which only felt cold.

One of the elderly fruit trees at the foot of the garden had succumbed over the summer, so she cut it down, burning the parts of the wood that still showed signs of taint and stacking up the parts that didn't for use around the garden. It wasn't the kind of disease that would easily spread, and the frosts would finish off the last of it.

It was restful, building and tending a garden fire. As a rule, fire made Grace uncomfortable, but this kind, held tightly under her control with no form of spreading, was one of the few kinds she could cope with. The small wood-fired stove she was considering installing in the living room was the other.

The sun had long set by the time the fire was dying. Grace was watching the quiet beauty of the breeze stirring the colours of the embers, resting her chin on the rake she'd been using to break down the fire, when she heard the creak of her garden gate.

Turning, she frowned when she caught the unmistakeable silhouette of Penelope Garcia, the Behavioural Analysis Unit's technical goddess. She had half been expecting someone else, which annoyed her even more. She pushed it away, though, and called out a greeting to her friend.

"Hey," Garcia called back, carefully picking her way through the dark garden. "You lose your cell phone?"

Instinctively, she reached for it, but her pockets were empty. _Bollocks._

"I must have left it inside," she said. "Mind how you go there, there's a step down."

Garcia paused. "Imma just wait here, then," she said, obviously thinking of her usual fabulous footwear.

"We got a case?" Grace asked.

Generally speaking, if someone ignored their phone, they were left to their own devices unless there was a call – though Garcia would frequently bend that unspoken rule if she was worried about you.

"Yeah…"

Grace narrowed her eyes at her friend's tone. "Bad one?"

"The unsub's targeting cops."


	2. Brothers in Arms

**Essential listening: Seven Nation Army, by The White Stripes**

 **0o0**

It hadn't taken her more than ten minutes to rake over the embers, change clothes and let her neighbours know to keep an eye on the mostly extinguished fire.

Serial killers on the prowl were never good news, but someone specifically targeting law enforcement was a particular problem. It put the community on edge, and when people were on edge, they got stupid, and where panic-stricken people got stupid, you got vigilantes.

Before long, the bodies would be piling up – and not just the unsub's.

She sank into the chair next to Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, steeling herself for a tough few days. So much for a relaxing, stress-free weekend.

SSA Emily Prentiss, gods bless her soul, dropped a strong cup of earl grey tea into her hands, recognising that this would be a rough one, and that while Grace hated coffee, she was going to need a caffeine spike.

Smiling in gratitude, she inhaled deeply, pleased that the bergamot was presently being seasoned with the scent of wood smoke.

"Your cell phone was off," said Hotch, glancing at her.

"Yeah, sorry boss," she replied with a wince. "I left it inside and the battery ran down."

"You could have been in trouble," he pointed out, in a mildly censorial tone, still reading through the notes of an earlier case.

Grace gave him a Look. "If you'd thought I was in trouble, you would never have sent Garcia."

The corner of his mouth twitched up, though he hid all other signs of amusement. She shook his head at him and returned to her tea as the rest of the team filed in. SSA David Rossi was the last one in, talking lazily into his phone, probably to another in a long string of amiable girlfriends. He seemed to get on with them even after they inevitably left him, and Grace had to envy him a little.

Particularly right now.

Across the table, SSA Morgan was animatedly trying to wheedle information out of Dr Spencer Reid about the girl in Atlanta he suspected his friend was dating. Reid simply rolled his eyes and sat down, blushing – and entirely avoided looking at Grace. It was as if the seat between Hotch and Prentiss was empty.

Not that she was entirely surprised. Still, it beat arguing with him all the damn time.

Oblivious to Grace's present mood, Special Agent Jordan Todd (their maternity leave media liaison) turned on the wall-mounted smart screen.

"Okay, before we start," she began, clicking on a media file. "You need to see this."

It was a news report about the shootings. The Commander was visibly shaken, as you would expect from a leader who had lost several of his people in a short time.

"That's three officers in the past four days," said Todd, pausing the clip. "After the first shooting the Phoenix Police Department assumed gang involvement."

"Pretty reasonable assumption," Rossi remarked.

Todd nodded. "True, almost thirty percent of all officer slayings are gang related."

"Technically it's closer to forty percent," Reid corrected, possibly a little defensive over someone quoting statistics – or at least driven to correct what he recognised as inaccuracy. "If a cop isn't killed during the commission of a crime, gang involvement is highly likely."

"Actually their precinct commander believes it may be a serial and has asked for our help," Todd told them.

"Interesting," said Grace, thoughtfully.

Generally, when a unit had a problem, they would try to keep things as in-house as possible. It was just the way people who had dedicated their lives to protecting others functioned; not being able to save the people who had your back, who meant everything to you, was one of the worst feelings in the world.

"What makes him doubt the gang theory?" Rossi asked, interested.

"A couple of things," Todd elaborated. "Last night's victims were killed _exactly_ the same way as the first."

"Shot in the neck," Hotch read summarised.

"And that's something that the press didn't release," Todd added.

"Well now, wait – there could still be a gang behind this," Prentiss pointed out. "Killers working together could establish the same M.O."

"Commander Marks hasn't ruled it out," Todd said, taking a seat. "But there's another detail…" She reached for the file, but Rossi beat her to it.

"Trophies," he said. "He took their badges."

"Gang members don't usually take trophies," Morgan reflected, raising an eyebrow. "They don't need to. This is an unsub with somethin' to prove."

"And he's got the entire city on edge," Hotch remarked.

Prentiss nodded. "Kill those who protect and serve, and no one feels safe."

0o0

 _We are all brothers under the skin, and I for one would be willing to skin humanity to prove it._

 _Ayn Rand_

0o0

Grace shifted on the bench seat on the jet, mildly uncomfortable. The others had taken their seats quickly – this was the kind of case that couldn't wait – and by the time Grace had joined them for their confab, the only place left was beside Reid.

There was a time when his proximity would have been welcome, but these days she would rather have hovered around the kitchen and leaned over Hotch or Rossi. Sadly, Morgan had beaten her to it. He took his seat, a mug of coffee in hand as Grace flicked through the files, taking extra care not to accidentally brush against him.

Todd passed the last of the files to Prentiss and hovered behind Morgan's chair; Grace envied her position.

"Go ahead, Garcia," Hotch said, to the intercom on the desk beside them.

" _Okay, while you birds have been in the air I got the four-one-one on the first shooting,"_ she said, obviously typing like crazy _. "Apparently, every Saturday night, Phoenix P.D. sets up a D.U.I. checkpoint."_

"Is that common knowledge?" Prentiss queried.

" _Mais oui,"_ said Garcia promptly. _"Public awareness is part of the deterrent. So, our unsub blows past said checkpoint at ninety M.P.H. and is pursued by officer…"_ There was a pause while she cross referenced. " _Jason Kessinger. Kessinger pulls the car over, approaches the driver's side window, where he is shot in the throat."_

Grace frowned, remembering. "Wasn't there a case in Colorado in the eighties like this?" she said. "Officer pulled someone over for a traffic stop, turned out to be an armed robber on the run who had sworn to take out a copper before he went back to gaol. He was completely disconnected to the victim – could have been anyone in a uniform and it would've been the same result."

"How do you know?" Reid asked, somewhere between rude and curious.

"You're not the only one who reads," said Grace lightly, not looking in his direction.

"Yeah," said Rossi. "I remember that – shot the officer in the back while he walked around the car, then dumped his vehicle at a house further up the road. There was a state-wide search for him – and he came relatively quietly."

Garcia sighed into the intercom. _"Kessinger? He was a single parent. Two daughters."_

The jet was silent for a moment, as each agent grieved privately for the two children who had lost everything in one fell swoop. Grace flicked through Kessinger's file; sure enough, there was a photograph of two young girls, hugging and smiling as their long blonde hair flew around them.

She scowled, tucking the picture away. Across from her, Morgan was lingering on his copy of the photo.

 _Of course,_ she thought. _His father was a copper – and he was shot on duty, and he left Morgan, and his mom and his sisters behind. This one is going to be a right bastard for him._

Making a mental note to buy him a drink when all this was over, she returned her attention to what Rossi was saying.

"So, the unsub planned ahead," said Rossi. "Used the D.U.I. stop to set his trap and then lured the officer to his death."

"Coulda been personal," Prentiss suggested. "The unsub might've had a problem with these particular officers."

Grace agreed. "True. You never know what you'll end up covering with who in a big city, even people from disparate parts of the force can end up working the same cases."

"Or he has a problem with law enforcement in general," Hotch continued. "He's sending a message."

"Criminals, gang members, academy washouts, security, rent-a-cops, teenagers – and that's just to start," Reid listed. "I mean, the list of people that have a problem with police officers is a long one."

Grace nodded. It had always astonished her how much certain law abiding people loathed the police, even if they'd never had any experience with them in the past. It seemed like a knee-jerk reaction. She knew where it came from, of course. The police hadn't always been the paragons of innocence her childish imagination had made them, from corruption in the ranks to the use of unsafe convictions (particularly during the miners' strikes) and unnecessary violence. But for the most part, almost everyone she met was a copper because they wanted to help people – either by protecting them, or by preventing bad things happening.

It wasn't that she wasn't aware that there were bad eggs – human nature and probability dictated that there would be people ruled by rage or greed, or any number of other problematic emotions. It was just that the majority were good people trying to do good work. It irritated her that they should all be tarred with the same brush.

Many of her high school friends couldn't understand her choice to join the force, and their later refusal to speak to her because they believed that all cops were dirty or violent had left her with a lingering disappointment.

Just because one officer was bad, didn't mean every officer would be – and she had been doubly determined not to be a part of the problem.

"The victims were shot in the neck, so the unsub knew they would be wearing body armour," Morgan related.

"Unlike Colorado," Grace reflected. "That was one of the things that made people bring in body armour for everyone."

"And he used a D.U.I. checkpoint," said Reid. "I mean both incidents show an active understanding of police procedure."

"Which narrows it down to anybody who watches television," said Morgan, wryly.

They all nodded. That wouldn't help.

"We need to cover victimology," said Hotch. "Garcia, find out everything you can about the officers killed. See what they had in common besides the uniform."

" _Will do,"_ she said, and there was an unusually pensive note to her voice. _"But I should warn you it will not be cake, because I have been on the phone with these guys all morning and pulling files from them has been like pulling molars."_

Everyone shared a dark look.

"Is there a problem?" Hotch asked, darkly.

Garcia huffed. _"You know, aside from the obvious grief for their fallen compadres and their fear of being used as target practice, I get the distinct impression from their crabby behaviour they are none too pleased their boss is outsourcing this investigation to the F.B.I. So, be prepared to hit a blue wall of resistance."_

Todd frowned as Garcia hung up. "You'd think they wanted our help."

"Yes and no," Grace mused. "It's _their_ family – they'll feel like they want to fix it."

Morgan nodded. "Brothers in arms."

"But if we could help catch the killer –"

"They won't see it that way," Rossi told her briskly. "They'll see us as interferin'."

"Imagine how we'd react if it was one of us being hurt or killed," Grace said.

"God forbid," Hotch murmured.

"How we _have_ reacted," Reid mused.

Todd still looked unconvinced, so Grace continued. "When someone who's got your back gets hurt you want to fix it, and you want to do it on your own – because you feel like you should have done a better job watching theirs."

"They're not just upset," Prentiss told her. "They're furious."

0o0

Phoenix was weird.

Not weird in a bad way – and probably not weird for any of the others – but from the moment Grace had stepped off the jet the whole place had felt _wrong._

Normally, she would have attributed this to the arcane and immediately started trying to track down the problem – whatever that was. This time, though, the feeling had a much more mundane explanation.

It was too fucking warm.

"I can't believe you think this is cold," she grumbled, for about the eighth time.

Reid, who had been a little surprised to find his ex-friend stripping as much clothing as she decorously could as soon as the local detectives left them alone, made a sound that might have been acknowledgement, but was probably closer to annoyance.

He hadn't expected her to talk to him – but then, she hadn't expected it, either.

"It's cold for Phoenix," said Todd, who was passing through on the way to fend off some of the media who were way too excited about the appearance of the F.B.I. "And sixty-four farenheit is quite cold. I mean, it's not Virginia cold, but still."

"An average temperature of eighteen degrees celcius," Grace (who was yet to get the hang of farenheit, despite two years of living in the States) complained, "is basically the definition of a British summer." Absently, she fanned herself with a manila folder, cursing the unsub who had necessitated the sudden change from acceptably cold winter weather to this weird, dry warmth. "The only thing missing is the rain."

Rain, she felt, would have been far more appropriate, but there wasn't a great deal of it in this part of Arizona, even in winter. Rain would have felt like the city was in mourning for their fallen watchers.

Today, it was relentlessly, inappropriately sunny.

She wrested her gaze from the board she and Reid had been tasked with setting up (another of Hotch's attempts to re-establish cordiality between them) and leaned against one of the old metal filing cabinets that lined this store-cupboard of a room.

Although Commander Marks had been initially welcoming, the rest of his personnel had presented a remarkably united front – and none of them were happy to see them. Lieutenant Evans, who had been designated their liaison, had made that entirely clear as soon as they had been introduced. He, like the majority of his colleagues, was convinced that a local gangbanger, 'Playboy', had committed the murders – revenge killings for his lieutenant's death a couple of months previously.

It was aggravating, but so far Garcia's description of getting anything done being like pulling teeth had been depressingly accurate. The officers here were a bit of an old boy's club (though there were a few women, here and there) and they resented outsiders being brought in to try to fix a home-grown problem.

She'd tried talking to a couple of them, needing the usual selection of information or impressions, but they had dismissed her outright, certain that a stranger – and an agent, not even a cop! – could never understand what they were going through, nor have similar experiences.

She scowled. If she'd been in a better mood, she might have reigned in her patience and tried again, but she wasn't. There wasn't a copper in the world who, after a few years of service under their belt, hadn't known or known of someone who had been hurt or killed on the job. Grace had done her time on the beat before transferring to Cross Bones; everyone had. Even if Lightfoot marked you out during training, he made sure you got the full experience of being a police officer on the front line. It gave you a different perspective, he said (and Grace agreed), one which you couldn't get any other way.

Now they were well into their second day in Phoenix and the local officers' determination to keep them out was preventing progress on the investigation, and winding all the B.A.U. agents up.

It didn't help that every time someone described the local criminals as 'gangbangers' she had to turn away and stuff her fist in her mouth. Grabbing a much needed drink in the hotel the night before, she'd told Todd and Prentiss what that meant in the UK and the three of them had laughed themselves hoarse.

This new shooting though, committed so close to midnight as to make no odds, leaving another family without a father and another cop without a partner, had changed the tenor of the whole department. She ran her eyes over the backs of thirty tense cops, all trying to ignore the F.B.I. enclave in the back of their room; their territory. There was that feeling, the tension in the back of the neck. It was the one you got in a crowd before things turned ugly – the deep breath before the storm. It lay thick on the building like a miasma, permeating every nook and cranny.

It made Grace's palms sweat.

"You feel that?" Reid asked quietly.

She glanced in his direction, surprised. Although they were maintaining a wall of cordiality while they were at work, they didn't really speak unless something had a direct impact on a case – and then usually only in the context of group meetings. The last time they had spoken one-on-one she'd punched him.

She frowned, the memory bringing a half-forgotten ache to her chest, and nodded.

"Like they're all about to go off the deep end?"

He jerked his head in what could have been a nod.

Grace glanced at him again. He was standing next to her, hands shoved deeply in his pockets, eyes searching the room, a slight frown creasing his forehead. To any of the officers of the Phoenix P.D. he would simply look like he was lost in thought, focussed on catching their unsub, but Grace knew him better. He was tense; aware of the undercurrent of menace around them.

"You can almost taste it," he mused, his voice soft, as if he had been speaking to himself.

Grace returned her gaze to the room at large, an acknowledgment of her silent agreement.

A few moments passed as they both scrutinised the men and women of the Phoenix P.D.; it was almost peaceful. It felt familiar. Safe.

Dangerous.

 _Strange,_ Grace thought, _that all it took to unite them was this general air of impending catastrophe, when their team had been trying to get them to make amends for weeks, with varying levels of subtlety._

"You were a beat cop, right?" he asked, his eyes still on the room.

Surprised, Grace nodded, watching the pantomime that heralded the beginning of the change of shift. "For a time."

"If they arrest someone they think is the right guy…"

He didn't need to finish the sentence. You didn't need to be a profiler to work out the likely outcome of any of these men coming up against one of Playboy's gang, evidence or no. They had already convinced themselves of his guilt; even the Commander. They wouldn't be easily dissuaded.

"We'd better find them first, then," she said, and met Reid's eyes.

There was something there that still wasn't altogether friendly – as she was sure there was in her own gaze – but mostly he just looked tired. The ache in her chest intensified as she tried to forget how she might have made a joke and cuffed his arm, trying to make him feel better. Something of it was mirrored in his expression, too, but it passed – they weren't the same people they had been before.

And they had other things to worry about. As one, they turned back to the board, determined to make a difference before someone was caught in the crossfire.

"Playboy," she remarked, eyeing the picture that Lieutenant Evans had grumpily insisted was included, despite how adamant the B.A.U. were that this wasn't gang related. "Who the hell looks at themselves and thinks _that_ would be a good name?"

"The kind of guy who thinks he has the power to shoot anyone who laughs at him," Reid responded, the ghost of a smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

If anything, that hurt even more.

"Garcia told me his real name is Eustace."

Grace snorted. "That explains a lot."

Behind them, amidst the chaos of the afternoon shift change, there was a murmur of triumph; Grace span, expecting trouble, and was rewarded by the sight of Lieutenant Evans 'assisting' a cuffed Playboy through the door and past the booking desk.

"Lighten up, man," said the self-proclaimed Playboy. "I'm tellin' you I didn't do it!"

"Oh yeah? Well I got a magic eight ball that says you did, Playboy," said Evans, with an air of easy menace.

She shared a look of concern with Reid as Hotch rounded the corner to speak to Marks.

"Commander, what's going on?" he asked, as his subordinates began to draw level.

"What's goin' on is my officers are bein' shot in the streets and crucified by the press, that's what's goin' on," Marks retorted.

"So you've arrested the wrong person?" Hotch demanded, unable to prevent a trace of annoyance coming through.

"I brought in a viable suspect for questioning," Commander Marks told him. "I had to do something."

"We _are_ doing something," said Grace tersely.

 _Or we would be, if anyone would give us any bloody information,_ she added privately.

"Commander, I understand the pressure you're under, but doing this could undermine the investigation," Hotch told him, frustrated.

"Bringing in another suspect draws attention away from the real one, so when he starts to feel inadequate he may strike sooner just to prove himself," Reid pointed out, keeping his voice down out of respect.

"It's also possible accusing one of their members could antagonise the local gangs," said Rossi. "Which is the last thing your officers need to be worrying about right now."

 _This is a dangerous, stupid road to have put his officers and the public they served on_ , Grace thought, painfully aware of how she would feel driven to act under the same circumstances.

"Alright, look," Marks said, annoyed. "I told you guys I was out on a limb here, so unless you have a suspect –"

"Hotch," Morgan interrupted, knowing this wasn't getting them anywhere. "Since we got this guy, why don't we see if we can use him? You mind if I talk to him?" he added, to Marks.

He sniffed, unimpressed. "Be my guest."

Hotch watched Morgan heading towards the interview rooms for a moment, before turning back to the Commander. "I appreciate you letting Agent Morgan join the interrogation, but I promise you this is not our unsub. Our killer's still out there."

Grace walked away, preferring to focus on the murder board than the politics of negotiating with an unfriendly resident population, and was surprised to find that Reid had followed suit.

He cast her a dark look and she nodded, easily taking his meaning.

 _He's still out there – and we better get him before anyone else gets hurt._


	3. Points of Authority

**Essential Listening: The Noose, by Perfect Circle**

 **0o0**

Morgan had been in the interrogation room for barely ten minutes before there was another shooting – in broad daylight, no less. One more officer was dead and another gravely injured, but this time the M.O. was all wrong. The earlier killings had all been well-crafted traps, constructed to separate partners and pull officers in.

Spencer reviewed the report with the detachment of someone who had seen far too many murders already. A blitz attack at a red light, no call, no trophies. This was clearly gang retaliation, not their unsub, but convincing the men and women forming the thin blue line in Phoenix was going to be something of an uphill struggle.

It hadn't taken long for the press and the police to jump the gun and decide the unsub was dead. They'd even called a triumphant press conference on the spot, and unfortunately Hotch hadn't managed to talk them down from that particular mistake. They'd been given sufferance for a little more time, but four hours wasn't nearly long enough to bring this one home. It was all they were going to get. He frowned, wondering how the hell they were going to pull this one out of the bag without someone else getting hurt.

Beside him, Pearce huffed, watching Morgan trying to get useful information from Evans. He ignored her. Unless it was about the case, he didn't want to know – and he was just as frustrated as she clearly was.

The resistance of the local officers was bordering on the ridiculous.

"Ballistics aren't back yet, but the preliminary M.E. report suggests the weapon used to kill officer Beck was not a .357," he read aloud.

 _No surprises there._

"I spoke to Garcia," Hotch told them, wearily. "Beck arrested Diablo twice on drug charges. Last time sent him away for ten years. Diablo was just released on parole last week."

"So Diablo went after the cop who put him away, assuming it would be lumped in with the other murders," Rossi surmised. "The unsub would take the fall."

"It almost worked," Emily observed, drily.

"Yeah, until he fell out of a third floor window," Pearce grumbled.

Spencer sent her a glare. She was right, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"Lieutenant, what did you find?" Hotch asked, before they could get further off-topic.

Spencer looked up. Evans was approaching with a slim file, looking harassed.

"Well I pulled up that information on Playboy's lieutenant, Bobby Q," he said, with obvious disinterest. He handed Morgan the file.

He was humouring them, but only just. Their remaining time was limited and he was obviously only helping them now so they could trip themselves up and get out of his hair.

"There's not much there," Morgan remarked, after flicking through.

Evans scowled at him. "And you're thinking Playboy was right and we didn't pay enough attention to the case."

"And did you?" Prentiss asked, giving him a hard look.

Five pages mostly comprised the autopsy report and a copy of the call sheet from when the murder was first called in; it looked like barely anything else had been done after they'd picked up the corpse. Even the forensics were unusually brief.

"Look," said Evans defensively. "The majority of homicides in this city are gang killings. Most of the time we spend time and resources that only lead to the same place anyway."

Unimpressed, Morgan slid the file across the desk to Rossi. Pearce turned back to the evidence board, an ugly expression on her face.

"You just assumed this was another one of those trails," said Hotch.

His tone hadn't been censorial, but Evans took it that way anyway.

"Being in a gang shortens your life expectancy, so it's no big surprise when a gangbanger winds up dead," he retorted.

Spencer ran his eyes over the man, thoughtfully.

 _He probably doesn't even realise how callous that sounded._

"Same could be said about being a cop," he said aloud, causing Evans' frown to deepen further. "The job involves a fair amount of risk, so a percentage of untimely deaths is practically inevitable."

Around the table, his colleagues nodded, which put Evans off a little.

 _He's not a bad cop,_ Spencer reminded himself. _He's just hurting – and that has made him desperate and lazy all at once._

"The M.O. was the same as our unsub," Rossi told them, pinning the crime scene pictures from the file up on the board. "Did – uh – Playboy tell you if the killer took a trophy?" he added, including Evans in the discussion whether he liked it or not.

They needed his local knowledge.

"He said Bobby Q's necklace was missin'," said Morgan, when the Lieutenant didn't answer.

"Yeah," said Evans. "It's in the report. Big chain, solid gold. Just figured the doer took it to pawn it."

"Or as a souvenir," Rossi pointed out.

Morgan nodded. "That's the signature."

Hotch set his eyes on Lieutenant Evans. "He built up to this – we need to go further back." He pulled out his phone; Spencer took a gulp of his tea, aware that if Garcia could help them track this guy down, there soon might not be time to finish it. "Garcia," said Hotch, putting her on speaker. "Could you pull everything in the Phoenix area that matches our M.O.? Not just police officers."

They listened as she began cross referencing, the sounds of the key strokes coming through the phone speaker a little tinnily. _"Okay, so I'm searching homicides in Phoenix in what – the last two months?"_ she asked.

"Uh, make it three," said Hotch, frowning.

" _Got it… murders, shootings, specifically neck wounds…"_

Spencer shifted his feet, impatient now they had a chance at getting the guy.

" _Oh, I got a guy named Robert Quinones, nicknamed Bobby Q –"_

"We already have that one," Morgan interrupted. "Anythin' else?"

" _Just one more – a bouncer at a bar in downtown Phoenix,"_ Garcia reported. " _Mickey Reese. Weapon's a .357 magnum…"_ She trailed off for a moment, and they waited, knowing that her brief silences were usually the precursor to the kind of data that broke cases wide open. " _Interesting. Says here that the victim was wearing a ballistic vest. Apparently they don't serve Shirley Temples at this establishment!"_

"The bouncer was wearing a vest," said Prentiss, raising an eyebrow. "That could be where our unsub developed his M.O."

"Send us everything you've got," Hotch instructed.

" _Sure."_ Everyone's phones buzzed. _"Done."_

"Alright, we got gangbangers, bouncers and cops," Morgan reeled off. "All pretty tough targets. Victims capable of defending themselves."

Spencer nodded slowly, seeing what his friend was getting at.

"As the unsub's sense of power escalated, so did his confidence," Rossi added. "Leading to bigger and more difficult prey."

"Makes sense," said Spencer, folding his arms. "Risky deaths would increase the unsub's feeling of superiority. Same thing with using a .357 magnum. It would make him feel powerful."

"So he needs to prove himself," Pearce mused. She had turned away when Morgan had said the word 'gangbangers', though Spencer couldn't begin to guess why, but now she was scanning Bobby Q's autopsy report thoughtfully. "He went after a gang member, but that still wasn't enough."

"Cops are at the top of that list," Prentiss commented. "High profile, always on alert and they're gonna make headlines."

"Killin' a gangbanger isn't easy," Lieutenant Evans reflected, following their line of argument. "They're always armed, travel in packs…"

Pearce nodded. "Harder to isolate than two people in a cruiser who have to go into a dangerous situation whether they like it or not."

"The bouncer's the earliest," Morgan said. "It was a pretty simple attack, no carefully thought out plan. He could have been the first victim."

"Then he might have been the stressor that kick-started all of this," said Pearce.

Hotch agreed. "We need to find out where their paths crossed. Morgan – you, Rossi and the Lieutenant check out the bar. We'll keep digging."

Spencer watched them go as Hotch and Garcia got down to the business of combing through Mickey Reese and Bobby Q's lives. It always amazed him how different the paths people took through life could be, even two people who had lived in the same area all their lives. Though, when you looked at it, Mickey Reese wasn't all that different from a gang member – he had simply found a way to make casual violence and thuggish behaviour a legitimate, legal profession.

He sighed and went to look at the map on the board, mildly irritated that Pearce had had a similar idea.

The crime scenes were clustered close together – including the first two murders, which Pearce was pinning onto the board. This guy definitely had a comfort zone.

 _And favoured murder site parameters_ , he added, thoughtfully. Each kill had been conducted somewhere dark, with plenty of places to hide or set up distractions. He'd managed to find little pockets of back streets or vacant lots where any shouts or gunshots would be ignored.

That was the problem of an area where gang violence was routine; if you heard a scream or a shot, you ignored it if you didn't want to get caught up in something deadly. It was the number one reason why people didn't report crimes or come forward as witnesses, and often made the difference between putting the right person away or having a case go stone cold.

He was about to remark on this when Pearce's phone buzzed.

"Pearce," she answered automatically, her head in the case. "Yes, speaking."

There was a pause where Spencer glanced up at her. If she had something that could break this case – he watched her expression change from one of concentration to one of pleasant surprise.

"Oh, hello!" she said, and immediately angled her body away from Spencer and the others.

It was an entirely unconscious movement, but it was telling.

 _Someone she doesn't want us to know about_ , he thought, frowning back at the map.

"Yeah, sorry about that – I'm out of town at the moment. No, I'm afraid not. Could be tomorrow, could be next week. It's a bit of an occupational hazard."

She laughed, and Spencer looked up in time to see both Hotch and Prentiss sending their colleague curious looks. Perhaps aware of the scrutiny, she took another step towards the window, away from them.

 _Definitely someone she doesn't want us to know about._

He swallowed, wondering where the hell the tightness in his throat had come from. He reached for the horrible coffee one of the officers had made them, possibly as an attempt to encourage them to leave.

"Sure – that sounds amazing," Pearce continued, probably unaware of how much her posture had changed. Already, she had lost all the tension she had been carrying around for the last couple of days.

Spencer couldn't help but wonder who was on the other end of the phone.

"Well, how about I give you a call back when I know we're coming back and we can work out a time that suits us both?"

She laughed again; behind her, Hotch and Prentiss exchanged looks of genuine amusement. Spencer realised he was holding the coffee mug perhaps a little too hard and set it down again.

"Fabulous. I look forward to it."

Hanging up, she turned back to the room as if nothing had happened to discover all three of her colleagues staring at her.

"What?" she asked, nonplussed.

"Made a new friend?" Hotch asked, looking entertained.

Prentiss raised a suggestive eyebrow at her.

"Oh, grow up," she said, and stuffed her phone back into her pocket, not quite able to keep the grin off her face.

0o0

"Three pair," said Morgan, triumphantly.

"Aw, man!" said Prentiss.

Grace put down her cards, resigned to losing the last of the snacks on the table. She'd had a run of lousy hands tonight, and poker wasn't her favourite game. It passed the time, though, and the others enjoyed it, partly because it was good profiling practice.

"Another round?" Rossi asked. He'd had the sense to fold and still had a pile of pretzels in front of him.

"Nah, deal me out," said Grace. "I'm out of M&Ms. Besides, there's a cup of tea calling me. Want one?" she asked, getting up.

"No thanks." Morgan grinned.

"Throw me a water?" Prentiss asked, as Rossi shook his head.

"Sure."

She made her way further up the jet to the little kitchen area, glancing at her other coworkers as she passed. Hotch was on the phone with his son, apparently talking about a field trip his nursery had taken him on. Todd, who had spent several of their Nights in Phoenix coordinating tip lines, was fast asleep, one of the files she'd been working on clutched to her chest. Reid was absorbed in a philosophy textbook, lost to the world.

Flicking the kettle on, she reached into the little fridge for Prentiss' water and grimaced as her abdomen protested. That was the problem with bruises, she mused, you always forgot about them until you did something that moved the, chucking the bottle over Todd's sleeping head. Prentiss caught it deftly, gave her a thumbs up and immediately turned her attention back to the game.

She rummaged in the cupboard for the green tea, reaching up stretching the skin over her stomach ached uncomfortably. She sighed. It wasn't the worst she'd had, by a long shot, but it was still going to take a few days to heal.

 _And it's going to piss me off every time I stretch or bend until then_ , she thought.

Taking down 'Animal', the man the members of the semi-legal fight club Mickey Reese had been a part of had recognised from the profile, had been easier than they had expected. Once they'd had the leader of the club (a wiry, wild-eyed man inexplicably known as 'Beanie') sit down with a forensic artist, it had been a reasonably simple matter to set up their trap.

Their unsub was plainly narcissistic, and the press conference Hotch had given – using just the right amount of arrogant confidence and concern to fake the announcement that the FBI were taking over the investigation from an incompetent police force – was the perfect bait. With the press conference and the sketch, they'd set up a tip-line and data had immediately started rolling in.

It had been a couple of hours before they'd got a likely sounding tip; their unsub had taken the bait and was obviously – given the deserted location he had chosen to say he'd 'seen' the murderer – setting up a trap of his own.

Of course, the tip had ultimately come to nothing, as they had suspected. He was trying to draw them out, testing their parameters; baiting them. The Phoenix P.D. had seemed surprised. Commissioner Marks, have been convinced by Lieutenant Evans to give the B.A.U.'s profile a chance, had grumbled, perhaps feeling that Hotch's carefully crafted speech had gone a little too far.

The agents had ignored him. They knew as soon as they caught the guy, they'd be forgiven and Marks would be able to issue a statement about collaboration with his head held high. With this in mind, they'd headed back to the department, leaving Hotch to travel back alone.

After the target they'd pasted on his back, the unsub hadn't been able to resist.

The look on his face when he'd followed Hotch around the back of a van to execute him, only to find four armed agents waiting for him had been particularly satisfying, especially after all the people he had murdered.

She stirred the hot water in her mug, contemplatively.

And then, after all the paperwork, and all the shouting, and the press conference Marks had been dying to give, when the team had nothing on their minds but shaking hands and heading home, three members of the Phoenix Police Department had been escorting Animal to the van that would take him to County lock-up. Grace had been walking down the steps above it all when she'd spotted Playboy begin elbowing his way to the front, his eyes never leaving Animal's head – looking for a clean shot.

She'd jumped about five steps down and got him pinned to the concrete pretty fast, but he'd fought like a demon, desperate to avenge the death of his brother in arms. Between his feet and elbows, he'd managed to get in quite a few blows as various officers and agents bundled Animal into the van, pushed spectators back, wrested the gun from Playboy's grip and came to her aid, and she was really feeling it today.

She rubbed her cheek, wincing at the pain. That particular bruise was beginning to look particularly ripe.

Playboy had been sobbing when Evans led him away, plainly astonished to find himself in complete sympathy with one of the men he'd been trying to arrest for years.

Animal had looked particularly smug when they drove off, as if he felt his legacy was alive and well in the families of the victims he'd created.

Perhaps she should have let Playboy shoot him.

Grace sighed.

No. There was no way of pretending that the dark underbelly of Phoenix would be miraculously cleaned up because one gang member was robbed of his revenge, but the cycle of violence that revenge murder drove onwards had to stop somewhere. She doubted whether Playboy would agree with her on that.

Or Evans, for that matter.

That was the sucky thing about being law enforcement. You had to uphold the law, even when it no longer felt like justice.


	4. Lily

**Essential Listening: The Last Unicorn, by Passenger**

 **0o0**

It had been a long-ass couple of days, Grace reflected.

As pleased as she was that they'd got their man in Phoenix, the trail of ruined lives he'd left behind had been particularly depressing. The whole team had felt it, being a little more subdued than usual for the handful of days they had been back. Morgan, who had been particularly affected by seeing another young boy lose his father in the line of duty, had even flown back out to Arizona to attend one of the fallen officer's funerals.

Grace wasn't sure it would help the little boy. She knew from experience that it was a very hard thing for a kid to understand, that their mummy or daddy was never coming home. One day they were there, making pancakes and terrible jokes, and then next day they just _weren't_. In modern, somewhat insulated society, the concept of death was just a bit too abstract and distant for most children to grasp. Even now she could picture her six year old self, running to the door every time someone knocked, convinced her mum would be there to tell her that it had all been a big mistake, that everything would be okay now.

For a kid whose parent had been murdered, though, that feeling had to be a million times worse.

She sighed and closed the report she'd been working on, emailing it to Hotch.

He would review it, toss it back to her if there was anything he felt she'd missed, then be flung upstairs to the committee of reviewers who read through all their cases, making sure they'd done everything as properly as they could.

Murder really did generate a ridiculous amount of paperwork.

Stretching – which made her bruises ache all over again – she checked her watch. It was already past six. Grace raised an eyebrow, surprised at the speed at which the afternoon had dissolved without them noticing, as if someone had simply wandered through and stolen it, storing the time up for emergencies. The whole team appeared to have been swept up in it; all of them were still at their desks, even though it was a Friday night and they all, ostensibly, had better things to do with their time.

Still, she reflected, it had been that kind of a case.

"You off?" asked Morgan, looking up as she pushed her chair back.

"Yeah," she said, "it's well past clocking off time."

There was a surprised murmur of assent as three of her colleagues looked at their watches, groaned and stretched.

"God, I'm hungry," said Prentiss, as if she'd only just realised it. Given how focused she'd been on the case files on her desk, that was fairly likely.

"Mmm," said Morgan, emphatically. "Yeah, food."

"Pizza?" asked Reid, pushing back his chair.

"Pizza," said Prentiss, emphatically. "And frickles."

"Urgh," said Grace. "You had me, right up until you said the word 'frickle'."

"Frickles are amazing!" Prentiss protested. "They're like a fry and a pickle rolled into one!"

Morgan stared at her for a moment. "Okay, you need to get the hell out of here."

"What, why?"

"Because you're creepin' me out about pickles right now, and I'm pretty sure your brain has stopped functionin'."

"I'll text JJ and see if she wants to meet up," said Reid, over Emily's protests. "I think it's Will's week to watch Henry, so…"

"Good idea," said Emily, grabbing her bag. "At least one guy here has a brain."

"Hey, whoa, whoa," Morgan protested. "I'm not the one jonesin' for fried pickle."

Grace pulled on her jacket, entertained.

"Where're we going?" Reid asked, as they started towards the lifts.

"Gino's?" Prentiss suggested, as Morgan waved a tired-looking Jordan Todd over to them.

"Food," he suggested, and she nodded gratefully.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Why else would I be wavin' at you?" Morgan asked, grinning.

"I don't know," said Todd, wearily. "Maybe there's a report I need to see. Maybe you're bored. Maybe the building's on fire."

"Okay," said Prentiss wisely. "You need pizza."

"Pizza?" Todd said, hopefully.

"And frickles."

"What the hell is a frickle?"

"JJ's gonna meet us there," said Reid, as the five of them got in the lift.

Grace chuckled to herself. It was good to hear her colleagues kick back and just be silly every once in a while. It made such a difference, particularly after a string of unpleasant cases – not that any serial case was really what you might describe as 'pleasant'.

"What about Garcia?" Reid asked, before the frickle discussion got entirely out of hand.

"I'll call her," said Morgan, instantly. "If she's still here she'll come out."

"Unless she has a date with Kevin tonight," Grace pointed out.

"Nah, he's outta town," Morgan said absently. "Hey, Babygirl, whatcya doin'?"

"I love that he knows that," said Todd, in an undertone, making Grace and Emily laugh as they stepped out of the lift.

"Whoa, hey, Britpop, where you goin'?" Morgan asked, as Grace started across the lobby. "We gotta wait for Penelope!"

Grace pulled a face, pausing for a moment. "Britpop? Really?"

"Made you stop, didn't it?"

She laughed and shook her head, adjusting her scarf. "I'm off, anyway."

"You're not coming?" Prentiss asked, surprised.

"Nope, sorry guys," she said lightly. "I've got plans."

"Plans?"

"Yeah," said Grace, checking her father's pocket watch. If she didn't head off soon, she'd be late.

"What kinda plans?" Morgan asked, his ears pricking up.

Prentiss was beginning to grin. "The kind of plans you make during mysterious phone calls, perhaps?" she asked, with an air of innocence.

"Ooh, what kind of mysterious phone call?" Todd asked.

"The kind that sounded like she was talking to a guy," said Prentiss, clearly enjoying herself. "She didn't stop grinning for an hour after."

"Oh, that kind!" Todd grinned.

"Somethin' you wanna tell us, Pearce?" Morgan prompted.

Grace sighed. Given how much grief she'd given him over his flirting, she'd half expected it.

"Not really," she said.

"Bein' mysterious, huh?" Morgan teased.

"You've got a boyfriend!" cried Todd, delighted.

Reid rolled his eyes, taking a bottle of water out of his bag.

"Aww, come on," Prentiss goaded. "You gotta give us something! You're going on a date."

 _Honestly,_ she thought. _They're worse than the W. bloody I._

"What is this, a mother's meeting?" she asked aloud, and three of them grinned. Amazed at how amusing the members of the B.A.U. found their colleagues' love lives, she shrugged. "A smokin' hot date," she said, deciding to play into it. "Which I'm about to be late for, so…"

She turned to go, but it seemed her teammates weren't quite finished with her.

Todd whistled.

"Smokin' hot, huh?" Morgan called after her, playfully. "What's his name?"

A grin already on her lips, she turned on her heel, briefly, and told them, cheerily. "Lily."

Reid spat out the water he'd been attempting to drink, choking.

She snickered, heading out the door with a wave, taking no small amount of delight in the sounds of chaos she had apparently left behind.

' _What's his name?' indeed!_

0o0

Ordinarily, she would have driven to a place as out of the way as this, but it was one of those occasions when it would have been silly to have a car in tow. She paid the cab driver and stepped out, pulling her coat collar up a little higher as the wind tried to climb down her neck.

The garage looked exactly the way it had six weeks before, when Grace had first decided to take the plunge: reasonably neat, despite the dirty nature of the work, and full of people who took pride in their work. Not top-of-the-range, but then, Grace wouldn't have been there if it was. She wanted people who genuinely cared, not people who wanted to sell you things.

"Hey." She greeted the scrawny young man who was unenthusiastically sweeping the front of the lot, looking like he'd much rather be inside in the warm. "Your boss about?"

The kid stared at her for a moment. Grace guessed from his body language that she wasn't quite what he'd imagined the clientele of this small, backstreet mechanic's shop would be. Eventually, he grunted, jabbing a gloved hand over his shoulder, and returned to his work.

Choosing to ignore this less than enthusiastic welcome, she went through the grotty front door, pausing for a moment to savour the smell of motor oil, dirt and metal.

Really, this was exactly her kind of place.

"Anyone in?" she called, and then spotted a pair of boots sticking out from under a sky blue Pontiac that must have been someone's pride and joy.

"Gimme a minute."

Grace did so, happy to have the leisure of admiring a classic car that someone had lavished such care and attention over. A minute or so later, the mechanic slid out from under the car and got up, wiping his hands on a rag he stuffed in his pocket. He was about her age, tanned under the motor oil, with ice-blue eyes. Grace wondered if there might have been some Scandinavian heritage there. His light brown hair was swept back into a messy man-bun, as it had been the first time she'd met him, and he was smiling, looking genuinely happy to see her.

"Sorry about that," he said. "Miss Pearce."

"Grace is fine," she said, shaking his hand despite the large amount of oil still on it. "This one's a real beauty," she remarked, nodding at the car.

"Yeah," said the mechanic, obviously pleased. "It was a wreck before they brought it in. Sat in some guy's back yard for thirty years, just rusting. Crime against machinery, if you ask me."

Grace hmmed her agreement, running her fingers over the shining bodywork. "Looks like you've raised her from the dead."

He laughed. "Feels like that sometimes," he said, and waggled his fingers. "Technical necromancy. We spoke on the phone. I'm Troy."

"For the wooden horse?" she asked, thinking of ancient battles.

"Nah, for my dad's college baseball team," he admitted, with a slow grin that seemed to spread across his face like molasses. "The Troy Trojans, outta Alabama. I can see where you got your name from, though."

Grace laughed at the rather obvious come-on, flattered.

"Optimism. I'm pretty sure I was a screaming ball of hellion when they named me," she told him.

"Well, you sure look good now," he said, with another slow grin.

"Is that so?" she asked, though she was aware she was also grinning.

He chuckled, not remotely put off. "Come on. I got her in the back."

"How is she?" Grace asked, following him around the tail end of the Pontiac and through another door.

"Purring like a kitten," he said, with professional pride. "You've got a real mover there."

"Yes," she said. "She's a bit of a rocket."

Although she'd known this moment was coming for over a month, now that it was finally here, she couldn't help but feel a flutter of anticipation. It had been too long.

"There."

Grace breathed out, beaming. In the middle of the shop floor was a sturdy, black and silver Royal Enfield Classic 350. A real sight for sore eyes.

"Hello Lil'," she said softly, running her hands over the handle bars. Her fingers passed over the unobtrusive gold lily she'd had painted on nearly a decade ago. "Did you miss me, old girl?"

"You go back a long way, huh?"

"You could say that," said Grace. "Got her when I was sixteen. Love at first sight."

"How long've you lived here?" Troy asked, curious.

"Nearly three years," said Grace, her eyes glued to her bike. "Feels like a decade right now."

"You had to leave her behind, huh?"

She nodded sadly. "I left her with a friend. Didn't know if I'd be staying or not."

"And now you are you had her shipped over," he nodded, understanding. "You've obviously taken good care of her," he said, a touch of approval in his voice.

"Labour of love," Grace said, crouching to admire the bodywork.

She raised an eyebrow, impressed. He'd taken out most of the nicks and scratches, but he'd left the one she'd got when she'd come off on a back road somewhere to the north of Glastonbury, far too many summers ago. She ran a finger over it.

"That looked like it had a story behind it," he said, watching her. "Figure you might want to keep it. I can take it out though, if –"

"No," she interrupted. "I'm quite fond of that one."

She looked up to find him grinning again. "You have a way with motors, Troy."

"I try," he said simply. "Like you said – labour of love. Lily's one of the most beautiful bikes I've ever worked on," Troy remarked, watching appreciatively as Grace checked the tyres and pressed lightly down on the seat.

"You'll make her blush," Grace said, shooting him a smile. "Did you take her out for a run?"

He nodded. "Had to check the engine – barely needed a tune. She's as sweet as honey. Great bodywork." Troy paused, eyeing her for a moment. "Well, matches her owner, I guess."

She shook her head, amused. "Oh, I think she's far prettier."

"I don't know about that."

She stood up, surprised. He was grinning at her again. It was kind of infectious. The corners of her mouth instinctively flicked upwards. It was strange, she reflected. She'd only met this man once before, and his good looks and affable nature had left little impression – not like they were now. The smile started forming on her face, apparently without any input from her brain.

 _Perhaps I was in the wrong frame of mind_ , she thought, remembering what else had been going on at the time.

"Are all Americans so forward?" she teased, putting on her crispest R.P. accent.

He laughed, shrugging. "Life is short and you are hot."

"You're not so bad, yourself," she allowed, rather enjoying the attention.

She wondered whether he knew he was paraphrasing Doctor Who.

He tilted his head, clearly assessing her. "Hey, uh – listen. I'm just about to knock off. There's a burger joint across the street. You wanna grab a bite to eat?"

It was the first time he'd sounded anything less than entirely confident.

 _So he means it,_ she thought. _Interesting._

Putting her head to one side, consciously mirroring his body language, she smiled. "Are you asking me out?"

He chuckled. "Well, that kinda depends on your answer," he admitted.

Grace laughed, the same slow grin spreading over her face.

 _Why not?_ she thought. _Life is short, and he is hot…_

"I could eat."


	5. Normal

**Essential listening: Well Respected Man, by Mott the Hoople**

0o0

"You know the best thing about the holiday season?" Penelope asked, plumping back down in the plush leather seat. "Pumpkin spice lattes."

Grace laughed, halfway through her panini. They had been in the coffee shop for half an hour already, and because of the crush of people taking refuge in the midst of their Christmas shopping, it had taken far longer than usual to get their food. Consequently, they were both on their second drink.

"Medium soy hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows," said the technical goddess, pushing the glass mug across the table to her.

"Fabulous," said Grace, and happily abandoned her panini in favour of eating the cream and marshmallows before they melted.

"You know what I like about you and Emily?" Garcia remarked, sipping her coffee.

"Our devilish good looks?"

"Yeah, that, and neither of you eat like you're trying to stay in shape," she said. "I get so tired of eating with people who eat like birds. It makes me hungry."

"We spend a considerable amount of time running around like mad things," she pointed out. "And when we're in town, we spend three evenings a week either in the gym or at yoga. It's the only way."

Garcia nodded, sagely. "I hate working out – but yoga doesn't suck too bad, I guess."

"You're welcome to come with us," said Grace, "Though to be honest, you look fabulous to start with."

"I do," said Garcia cheerfully, "but it couldn't hurt – and I like the idea of seeking karma outside the office as well as inside it."

Grace laughed. "It helped my back, too, when I was stuck in the office all the time back in home."

"Yeah, that's the problem with being a computerized warrior for karma," her friend lamented. "You do a lot of it sitting in one place, ruining your lumbar region."

"Assuming we're still here, there's a yoga class we're planning to go to Wednesday evening," said Grace, but Garcia pulled a face.

"I would, but I have a super-hot date with the lovely Kevin, and I've stood him up enough already."

"Occupational hazard."

"Yeah. At least he's Quantico, so he gets it."

"Mmm."

They ate in unusual silence for a few minutes, tuning out the over-load Christmas jazz being piped in through the overhead speakers. Unusual, because Garcia was seldom silent (often things simply fell out of her mouth without prior consultation with her brain), and because she kept looking at Grace out of the corner of her eye.

Grace smiled to herself. Of all of her friends, Garcia was the easiest to read – and once she found something out that interested her, she would chase it until she understood it entirely. It was part of what made her such an excellent technical analyst; the unsubs just didn't stand a chance.

She savoured her food, taking mild enjoyment from watching her friend watching her. After all, just because Grace knew she was dying to grill her didn't mean she had to help.

"Speaking of super-hot dates," said Garcia, at last, playing with the icing on her mince pie. "A little bird told me you had one, Friday night."

 _The direct approach then_ , Grace thought. _Interesting._

Generally, Garcia tried to be sneaky, at least at first.

"I did," said Grace, amused.

"So, spill!" Garcia demanded, slapping her hand on the table.

Grace considered her for a moment. "I would tell you to 'make me', but you scare me a little," she remarked.

"Come on, 007, I bought you a drink!" Garcia cajoled.

Grace smirked. "I bought _you_ one earlier."

Garcia pouted, and Grace relented. Really, she was never not going to tell her. "What do you want to know?"

" _Everything!_ " she cried at once. "What she looks like, where she lives, where she works – you know I'm responsible for vetting all our team's romantic assignations."

"You've got your work cut out with Morgan, then," Grace quipped.

"I shall ignore that, since you are plainly jealous," said Garcia briskly, making her friend snort. "How else am I supposed to know that my babies are all safe and happy, and –"

"Alright, alright," Grace laughed, throwing her hands up in defeat. "I've known Lily since I was sixteen, and in all those years she's never once let me down."

"Wow, all that time?" Garcia asked.

Grace nodded, her face serious. "It was love at first sight. I mean, she's pretty damn foxy," she said, with a genuine smile. "I think I can safely describe her as my soulmate."

"Oh my gosh! _How_ have you never told me about her before?" Garcia asked, surprised. "I make it a principle to vet people before it gets this serious!"

Grace laughed, and so did Garcia.

"So, you think it's going to last?" she asked, more seriously.

Grace grinned. She was obviously delighted for her; she was quite touched.

"Oh yes, me and Lil' will be together 'til the end," she told her. "I tell you what, I'll introduce you, if you want?"

Garcia clapped happily. "Oh my God, yes!"

0o0

After punching her several times in the arm, Garcia was now clutching Grace's shoulder, laughing so hard that her legs had gone weak. Grace wasn't doing much better.

"I – I see what you mean," said Garcia, wiping tears of mirth off her cheeks. "She really is smokin' hot!"

"Love of my life, this one," Grace agreed.

"Oh, you are so _mean!_ "

Grace giggled. "I'm sorry – I couldn't help it. The guys kind of walked into it the other day, and I couldn't resist!"

"So the call you had…?"

"That was Troy, the mechanic."

"Makes sense," said Garcia, calming down a little. "And here we all were, thinking you were on a hot date!"

"Well, Troy was pretty hot," Grace admitted, smiling a little at the memory. "And he took me to dinner."

Garcia's mouth formed a perfect 'o'. "You realise I'm gonna need to know everything about him."

Grace nodded. "I don't doubt it. Come on, let's go get a drink and –"

She looked down as her phone buzzed; Garcia did the same, digging through her purse.

"Or not…"

"Dammit!" Garcia exclaimed. "Don't think you're getting out of this," she added, poking Grace in the arm. "And I haven't even got Esther with me!"

"I've got you covered," said Grace, opening the hatch at the back of her bike and pulling out a spare helmet. "We can leave her at mine and then walk to the AMTRACK from there."

"Ooh!" Garcia cried, and it was almost a squeal of delight. "I've always wanted to ride a bike! You sure you don't mind sharing your 'soulmate'?"

Grace laughed. "No – so long as you behave yourself. Besides, she likes you."

Garcia petted Lily's handlebars. "Of course she does, she's a lady of taste!"

"Just seems a shame to give up the jig with the others so soon," said Grace, with a note of wistfulness in her voice. "They all have this desperate need to infiltrate each other's love lives – and you're no exception."

Garcia didn't look remotely contrite. "Oh – oh, can we keep it up for a while?" she asked instead. "I could do with a little distraction."

"Why not?" said Grace, with a grin. "It'll be good to have a partner in crime!"

0o0

 _Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats._

 _H. L. Mencken_

0o0

The cheerful mood she had been in before had evaporated as soon as they'd got the call. Someone was shooting people in their cars, not only taking out their intended victim, but also endangering everyone else on the freeway.

To the media and the public it seemed random and arbitrary, and already the roads were emptier than before – but that couldn't last. Everyone needed to get to work, to drop their kids at school, to pick up groceries. Sooner or later, people would have to go back to their cars – and then the cover of other road users and the victim pool the unsub craved would be back to full capacity.

It was only a matter of time.

"This is Orange County, California," Todd announced, handing out relatively thick files. "Ten days ago, Judy Hannity, a real estate worker and a mother, was shot on the 91 freeway."

She took her seat at the table on the jet; it was a mark of how desperate this one already looked that they had skipped the usual briefing and gone straight from the office to the airstrip, with only minimal grumbling. Hotch hadn't even let them put their bags down.

 _Orange County._

Grace opened the file, wondering when she was going to be allowed to be in a state that was roughly the 'right' temperature for winter.

"She survived?" Prentiss asked, surprised, reading the file.

"Barely," said Todd. "She's paralysed from the waist down. The second and third victims were both D.O.A. Different vehicles were used for each shooting," she added, and check the notes she'd made before presenting the case to Hotch. "A small, black S.U.V., a black sedan, a white sedan – no makes, no plates…"

"Forensic countermeasures," Grace observed. "He's not just doing this at random, he'd putting some thought into it."

"No solid witnesses?" Morgan asked.

"The first victim described the shooter as a normal, middle-aged white guy in an S.U.V." said Todd.

Hotch frowned, looking up from his own perusal of the file. "She gave that description, but she couldn't remember anything else?" he asked.

"Isn't that consistent with trauma?" Todd aske, puzzled.

"Uh – actually, no," Prentiss explained. "Trauma victims usually remember everything, or nothing."

"She could be hiding something," suggested Grace. "And given that she's the first victim, it might give us something. "We'll need to talk to her."

"I'll set it up," said Todd, making a note.

"So, wait, the third victim was shot last week, we just got the phone call today?" Reid asked, surprised.

Generally, the sooner they got onto the trail of an unsub, the better – particularly serial shooters, and the locals tended to know that. Rossi and Gideon had spent much of the eighties and nineties convincing them of it. It was unusual not to get the call before the bodies started piling up.

"Until the third shooting, the locals weren't convinced it _was_ a serial shooter," Todd explained. "There were different cars and in the first shooting there was a different weapon."

Rossi got up. "It's the same weapon," he said, spreading the crime scene photos across the table.

Everyone leaned forward to look.

"The shot pattern on the second and third ones are much wider, though," Reid said, after a moment.

"He sawed off the shotgun," Rossi said. "It's the same shooter. He's evolving – and quickly."

"Judy Hannity may well have been the trigger, though," Grace mused.

"The media's already dubbed him the 'Road Warrior'," said Todd, with considerable scorn.

"Oh, great. That's just what we need," Grace grumbled.

Either side of her, Reid and Rossi both made noises of discontent.

"That explains why they wanted us there so quickly," Prentiss reflected.

Todd frowned. "Whaddya mean?"

"This type of unsub is the hardest to catch," said Morgan. "Totally impersonal victims, a third of the crime scene flees with him in his vehicle, the victim's car is a wreck, and the last third the road is contaminated by all the other cars who drive over it."

"He's like an L.D.S.K., but far more mobile," Grace added.

"So, how do we get him?"

"We build a solid profile, we release it to the public with an appeal for help," Hotch told her. "Somebody knows this guy."

"And it's my job to make them realise," said Todd, understanding.

 _And it'll feel like it's on you when we roll the next corpse in_ , thought Grace. _But it won't be. This kind of killer won't be easily tracked or stopped, and we'll definitely have more victims._

She pursed her lips, reading the crime scene notes in the file in her lap.

No one could be blamed for more deaths but the unsub, of course, but convincing someone of that when they were trying their hardest to save people was not going to be easy.

She sighed. She might not entirely like the woman, but someone ought to be keeping an eye on Todd this time – not because she might step out of line, she had progressed beyond that – but because this was the kind of case that could break a person.

Counter terrorism was the kind of work where many people might die if you fucked up; the B.A.U. was worse, at times, because it was the kind of work where you could do everything right and still end up with a mound of corpses. And each one of those corpses would be a person whose life you delved into, in case their victimology might help you track their killer down – or others, in the future.

It was brutal, and Todd was still new.

The team moved back to their own seats, taking the time to familiarise themselves with every detail of the first three shootings.

In her pocket, Grace's phone buzzed; distracted from the grizzly images on her lap, she grinned, and texted her apologies. For the first time since she'd moved to the US, she was less excited to be on the move and exploring than sad to be away from Virginia. She texted back, apologising for missing the date they had had planned that night.

It didn't take long to get a reply from Troy.

 _Go get 'em, Tiger! Call me when you get home and you can make it up to me ;)_

Grace snorted.

 _I'm going to have my hands full with this one,_ she thought, and decided that she didn't have a particular problem with that.


	6. Road Rage

**Essential listening: Road Rage, by Catatonia**

 **0o0**

The pack of SSAs strolled into the Orange County Sheriff's Office in the wake of their temporary media liaison, who was doing a good job of looking like she knew what she was doing and where she was going, just now.

She didn't always, but then, Spencer reflected, neither did he. You couldn't be on point all the time, it just wasn't humanly possible. He was unprepared to admit to himself that part of the reason he was willing to give her such latitude (despite that she was new and that he was a little worried about how her inexperience might impact their investigation) was because he knew that Grace Pearce didn't like her.

Oh, she hadn't said anything, as far as he knew (though he been emphatically making sure he wasn't in a position to find out, of late), but the million, myriad little tells the woman had, that he had learned by heart, and couldn't ignore, even if he wanted to (and God, but he'd tried), they told a very different story. She didn't trust Todd, and while he was loath to accept it, he still trusted Grace; her judgement (most of the time), and with his and the rest of the teams' lives.

That trust was an ever-present thorn in his side that he'd rather not examine too closely, but it had its uses.

It had made him wary of the officers in Phoenix – more than he would have been without her – and it had made him wary of Todd's naivety (insofar as anyone who had worked in counter-terrorism for four years could still remain naïve – but for them, consequences were more distant, he supposed).

Currently, since he'd prefer the trust that was still in him had been expunged, it meant that he was treating Todd with something resembling over-confidence. He encouraged her as much as he could, even when he didn't feel like it was entirely justified, and let her vent about people who were annoying her (usually Morgan). It did, at least, mean Jordan occasionally treated him to coffee, and his case notes had never been processed faster, even when JJ was being nice to him.

 _Besides_ , he told himself, watching as she was directed to the floor where the task force was assembled, _everyone starts out new and a little hopeless. I did. I'm okay._

They came out of the elevator en-masse, into a bunker-like extension to the third floor. The lead detective looked up from the screen she had been watching over and came immediately to greet them.

"Thea Salinas, Sheriff's county homicide," she said, introducing herself. "I'm running the task force."

Todd shook her hand, smiling. "I'm Special Agent Jordan Todd. These are Special Agents Rossi, Hotchner, Prentiss, Morgan, Pearce and that's Doctor Spencer Reid."

Salinas shook hands with everyone, even returning the little wave Spencer gave her.

"Are these the vehicles from the shootings?" Hotch asked, looking towards the caged off forensics area in the back.

"Yes," Salinas nodded, and Prentiss, Pearce and Morgan peeled off towards the vehicles and murder boards.

"Did you set up the hotline?" Todd asked.

"Like you asked," Salinas told them, folding her arms. "We have the local stations putting the number out there. We're getting about a dozen calls an hour."

"I'll alert the media to stand by for our press conference," said Todd. "Excuse me." She hurried away, her cell phone already in hand.

"The Sheriff's Department and the CHP are on TAC-alert," Salina briefed them. "We've got choppers on round-the-clock freeway patrol." She pointed towards the back of the room. "Victims vehicles with maps, CSPs and bullet points. Everything we got on the cases is in this room."

Reid nodded in approval. This was the kind of ship he imagined Pearce might have run back in London – exactly the kind of thing he would have been hopeless at. He frowned at himself, wondering why that had come to mind.

"Anything solid on the tip line?" Rossi asked.

"Usual nut jobs," said Salinas. "Crime buffs. Bored senior citizens."

The three agents exchanged impressed looks.

"Well, you've got everything squared away," said Rossi.

"It's not me," Salinas told them. "It's the shooter. Orange County has an endless supply of three things: freeways, news coverage, and blonde, female luxury car owners."

"An endless victim-pool," Pearce reflected.

"People are pretty scared?" Reid guessed.

Salinas gave him a Look. "I could ask for a submarine and get it."

0o0

"The M.O. of the first shooting differs dramatically from the other two," said Hotch. He, Morgan and Prentiss were checking out the murder boards, maps and physical evidence, ranged around the cars. "Daylight on a crowded freeway."

"Dozens of potential witnesses," said Prentiss. "It's high risk. He got lucky."

"Well then, he's a fast study," said Morgan, who had commandeered a white-board. "Sawed off a shotgun and lowered his risk by switchin' to nights and changin' vehicles."

"What if he wasn't planning on murder the first time," Prentiss suggested.

Morgan looked up from the board. "Think the first shooting was spontaneous?"

"Well, we know what he's capable of when he plans ahead," she told him.

Hotch nodded. "If I'm not planning to commit a crime, why not drive my own vehicle."

"So, the SUV is his actual car," Prentiss realised. "But then… why did he have a gun in the SUV if he wasn't planning to commit murder?"

 _Good question_ , thought Hotch.

Morgan agreed, putting his pen down. "And what happened made him pull that first trigger."

0o0

Grace stalked through the hospital, trying to stave off the uncomfortable combination of bad memories and overly intense paranatural vibes that places like these always seemed to elicit.

"Do you think she'll talk to us?" Emily asked, keeping pace.

"I suppose that depends on what she did to set him off. I think it's down here…"

"You really don't like hospitals, do you?" Emily asked and Grace shot her a look.

"That obvious, huh?"

Her friend grinned. "Well, I am a profiler."

"That you are," said Grace, and carried on without elaborating further.

The truth, but none of the detail; it was the only way to get things done in a team like this.

She could feel Emily shaking her head at her, but the upside of working with people as dedicated to nosiness as they were was that generally they were aware when you needed them to back off.

It didn't take them long to find the right room, and they paused outside it for a moment, assessing its occupants. Judy Hannity was a mess of bruises and bandages, but she was trying to smile for her teenage son, who was obviously trying to cheer him up.

"You want the mother or the son?" Grace asked.

"I'll take the kid," said Emily. "See if there's anything he doesn't know he knows."

Grace nodded, ignoring the smell of disinfectant; the small room would be claustrophobic, and the sounds of the machines had the power to take her right back to a bed in London, where the pieces of her broken heart were probably still falling. Then she straightened her back and opened the door.

Rick Hannity, aged sixteen and very worried about his mother, got quickly to his feet when he saw them, squaring up defensively in front of his mother. Grace looked him over; he was beyond stressed. She kept her tone and body language gentle and non-threatening, accordingly.

"Ms Hannity, I'm Agent Grace Pearce, this is Agent Emily Prentiss," she said, showing both Hannity's the badge. "We're from the FBI."

"She's already told the police everything she can remember," said Rick, firmly. It was very clear he wanted his mum disturbed as little as possible, and Grace gave him a small smile. It was good that she had him in his corner.

"Rick," said Judy Hannity weakly, from the bed. "S'okay…"

Emily gestured to Rick to follow her from the room. "Please?"

The boy swallowed and went with her, the door closing gently behind them.

"It's just the two of us," said Judy, wanting to explain. "He feels like it's his job to protect me."

"Looks like he's doing a great job," said Grace, with a smile. "Not many people can stand up a couple of sinister FBI agents."

The woman in the bed returned the smile, albeit weakly. "Do you have kids, Agent Pearce?"

"I had a son," said Grace.

She didn't need to elaborate; Judy nodded, sadly.

"I'm sorry."

Grace gave a smile and a little shake of her head. It didn't matter, here or now. "I understand you've spoken to the police, ma'am, and I understand that this may be tiring for you, given what you've been through," she said. "There's a few things I need to ask about the shooting, if I may?"

Judy closed her eyes for a moment. "It only comes back in pieces."

"Take as long as you need," Grace told her, taking a seat. "Just try to piece together your day, if you can."

0o0

Emily stood beside Rick Hannity, who couldn't take his worried eyes off his mother. There was a deep sort of tension to him – more than perhaps there ought to be, even in a situation as stressful as this. It was a loose thread that needed to be pulled, but she didn't think she would have to.

Rick gave her the kind of vibe that suggested there were things he needed off his chest, so she radiated a calm, comforting presence instead. Her patience was rewarded after a few minutes.

He cleared his throat. "Have you seen accidents like this before?"

Emily nodded, pleased that he was beginning to open up without prodding. "A few."

"And did –" He swallowed. "– people recover?"

Emily glanced at him; so that was it. "The doctors said she has a good chance," she told him, trying to sound certain and hopeful.

Rick winced, and began to tear up. "It's my fault."

"No," said Emily at once. "This is no one's fault but the man who shot your mother."

"I-I got in trouble at school. She was on her way there – she shouldn't have even been in her car," he cried.

 _So that was it._

"That doesn't make it your fault," E told him firmly, shaking her head. "You couldn't have known, or prevented it. The unsub might have simply caught up with her at another time. It was random chance."

0o0

"So, you were angry?" Grace asked carefully.

No wonder she didn't want to talk about what she remembered – her son must be blaming himself for this whole mess.

Judy raised an eyebrow, obviously struggling. "I don't know. I suppose."

"I know this is difficult, but every detail helps us understand who this man is," Grace encouraged her. "And that could mean we could stop him hurting anyone else."

"I-I was impatient," she said, after a few moments thought.

"And you cut in front of him?"

She nodded, looking away.

"Was there anything else?" Grace asked. "Did he swear? Did he honk his horn? Did he give you the finger through the window? Did he communicate with you in any way?"

Judy Hannity paused again, but Grace didn't think she was struggling to remember this time. No. there was something close to shame in her steady gaze, now.

 _She was blaming herself, too,_ she realised.

"He tried to speak to me," Judy said.

 _Interesting._

"What did he say?"

The woman in the bed took a breath, a tear leaking down the side of her cheek. "He c-couldn't say it," she admitted. "I… I wouldn't give him a chance." She closed her eyes and swallowed. "If he hadn't seemed so _normal_ I wouldn't have said anything."

Grace nodded, looking away. Judy Hannity had unwittingly unleashed this creature on Orange County – but she couldn't know that. It could have been anyone – any strong-willed blonde woman who lashed out in traffic. Common courtesy aside, everybody had days when they snapped at someone without thinking – it didn't mean someone got to shoot them for it.

"I don't even usually use my horn," said Judy Hannity tearfully. "Because on the road, you never know."

"It's not your fault," Grace assured her, as the woman started crying quietly. "Everybody has a bad day now and then, and you shouldn't get shot for it. I'll ask your son to come back in."

She emerged into the corridor, where Rick Hannity was scrubbing at his face; she exchanged a look with Emily, who gave a very slight nod.

"Is she okay?" Rick asked, as soon as he saw her.

Grace smiled. "She says you've been taking very good care of her."

"I guess," he said, looking unconvinced.

She let him slip past her, back into his mother's room.

"So," Emily asked. "Rick was in trouble at school, she was angry on the road. What happened?"

"She yelled at him," said Grace. "Must've said something very personal to trigger him like that."

"And given their age and sexes I can guess what might have set him off," Emily mused, as they made their way back towards the elevators.

Grace nodded. "She emasculated him."

0o0

Spencer picked up the last file, quickly assimilating its contents; there had to be a pattern here they weren't seeing. Beside him, the dedicated and no-nonsense Thea Salinas was holding a file of her own, frowning at the speed at which he read, but that was nothing new, so he ignored it.

"With victimology this specific, we know the victims must represent a specific person to him," Spencer mused aloud.

"Who?" Salinas asked, interested.

"Given the fact that he's the same age and race as the victims, it's likely a current or former wife or girlfriend," Spencer told her.

Salinas frowned. "Why not just kill the actual person?"

"She's a scapegoat for his own, personal failings…" he said, looking up.

Across the room, the door opened; Emily and Pearce walked past – they must have just got back from the hospital. Pearce was texting someone, as she often was these days, a wicked smile on her face. It was the kind of smile that still managed to make his stomach do flips, even though he hated her for how intrusive she had been in Vegas; really, how had she imagined she had had the right? Feeling hot and angry, all of a sudden, Spencer glared at her (without a trace of irony) until she was out of sight.

"He knows if he kills her, he loses that scapegoat," he said, turning his attention back to Detective Salinas.

"So, he just goes around blowing away random women?" she asked, looking disgusted.

"No, just women that remind him of his wife." He peered at the road map of Orange County. "Uh, when this type of killer is triggered they need to release the resentment quickly. Subsequently, they tend to kill close to the focus of that resentment."

"So," Salinas said, joining him in his assessment of the map. "If the focus is his wife… then that focus is – his home?"

Spencer nodded, frowning at the map. "Yeah… he almost certainly lives in this area, this is his kill zone. Uh, what are these – these various markers everywhere?" he asked, pointing to several triangular markers with different colours and numbers in them.

"Oh – road work," Salinas told him.

"Road work," he mouthed.

 _Oh._

He picked up the map and hurried to the far side of the mass of cars, where the rest of the team were working around a whiteboard they had commandeered as their own, Salinas hard on his heels.

Pearce had even put her phone away. He spared her a glare even so, as he passed her.

"Judy Hannity said that he shot her after she challenged him personally. Before that he was almost apologetic," she was saying, but she paused as Spencer spread his map out over the desk.

"What's goin' on?" Rossi asked.

"Out of the thirty road work sites in the kill zone, only two were alternate merges," he told them, with a sense of urgency. "Both less than three miles from the crime scenes."

"Alternate merges?" Prentiss asked.

"Uh, multiple lanes funnelled down to one," he explained. "One car per lane, alternating at the driver's discretion."

"That's just crying out for trouble," said Pearce, and while Spencer couldn't bring himself to look in her direction, he did at least nod.

"These sites allow him to set up the confrontation," Morgan guessed.

"A guy who follows the rules may lash out, but to do it again he'd need similar provocation," said Rossi, understanding.

"So, he seeks out alternate merge sites, and he goes through them over and over again until he finds a woman that fits his victim type," Hotch reasoned. "And who cuts him off."

"He's essentially hunting them," Grace mused. "Setting a trap and waiting until someone takes the bait."

"So, we have to shut down every alternate merge in the county, immediately," Prentiss suggested.

"And we need to talk to the crews that work these sites," Morgan added.

"Okay," said Prentiss, and headed off to speak to the Mayor, already dialling her cell.

"So, what does all this tell you?" Thea Salinas asked.

"Impersonal killers are like drug addicts," Hotch told her. "The first time gives them the ultimate high, and after that no high is as good. Unfortunately, the addict doesn't know that. He will chase that high to the gates of insanity and death. By now, killing is all our unsub thinks about. He's set up the exact same situation again and again, hoping to get the same result. He begins to think he's doing it wrong. He becomes obsessed with improving his skills, honing his M.O.… and tailoring his weapon to his deadly purpose. He figures if he gets them all just right, if he can get his technique and his tools perfected, he'll feel that first high again. He's becoming a more lethal addict. And he'll never accept that the high is gone and it won't come back. He'll never stop. Never."

0o0

 **Sorry it's a little late, folks – it's been that sort of week.**

 **Big shout out to the guest reviewers, btw, like Elisa C and Lizzy B :) I tend not to answer questions on the actual chapters, so if you fancy a chat drop me a review as a member and I'll get back to you!**

 **Parlanchina xx**


	7. Beware of the Dogs

**Essential Listening: Monster, by Imagine Dragons**

0o0

 _This case,_ Emily thought. _This case…_

It was a 'total arse' in Grace's words.

It had been bad before, when they'd thought they'd had an unknown madman taking people out on the road, but now they knew he was actively hunting the pressure was really ramping up. If this unsub had a family, it would only be a matter of time before his disassociation with reality drove him to kill every one of them. Pretty soon they would be running out of time.

The majority of the team were in the Orange County Sheriff's Office, ready to give the profile.

"The hyper-masculine disguise, victim preference and the emasculating trigger of the first attack tell us this is an unsub suffering a masculine identity crisis," Hotch began.

"A masculine identity crisis?" Detective Salinas exclaimed, astonished. " _That's_ why he's driving around, blowing women away?"

"No, Judy Hannity was just the trigger," Emily explained. "We need to identify the precipitating trauma."

"Something happened in the unsub's life, something so traumatic it turned a normal man into a serial killer," said Morgan.

"So he's suffering from some kind of psychotic break," Salinas realised.

"Which means the world he sees around him has changed," Rossi told the room. "And so has his role in it."

"And that of his family," Hotch continued. "His perception of his home life is the key to his pathology. At home this unsub feels less than a man – a failure as a father, and as a husband. He feels his children don't need or respect him, and that he's unwanted or obsolete in their lives."

"As a husband he feels emasculated and humiliated by his wife," Morgan added. "And these beliefs and perceptions, real or imagined, have destroyed his masculine self-image."

"This unsub is delusional," said Emily, and several people made a note of that particular word. "He's now dressing in this Road Warrior persona, which gives him the feelings of power and purpose that he craves. It is now the single more important thing in his life – and he _will_ die before giving it up."

"His new fantasy persona can't coexist with the everyday reality of his home life," Rossi reiterated.

"Which means, sooner or later he's going to kill his entire family," Morgan finished, heavily.

Salinas nodded, a dark expression on her face. "So what do we do?"

"Our strategy's threefold," Hotch explained. "First, we find every small model blue SUV owner in the estimated kill zone – Agents Reid and Pearce are working on that with our technical analyst, Penelope Garcia."

Emily exchanged a pointed look with Morgan.

"I wonder how _that's_ going," he murmured.

She raised an eyebrow in agreement. Those two were hard work, these days.

 _Poor Garcia._

"Two, we set up a single alternate merge scenario in that zone and we man it with our people. And three, we release our profile to the public. Somebody out there knows this man. They just don't realise it."

0o0

Grace peered into the car. She couldn't decide whether the viscous rivulets of blood running down the window would be worse in a place where winter was sensible and icy, or here, where it was still warm enough to start to really hum after less than half an hour, even without the bodies in situ. Neither scenario was particularly good for evidence collection purposes, but she found herself nostalgic for winter windows steamed up with breath instead of bodily fluids, or the crunch of ice underfoot, or even (gods help her) that kind of misty drizzle that settled on the land in November and didn't let go until spring.

She watched, mesmerised, as a droplet of blood formed on the ceiling and fell to the seat with a splash.

The two men inside hadn't stood a chance. There wasn't any glass inside, so the window must have been rolled down. Both windows, in fact, since the blood spatter from the driver had run down the side of the car and splashed out onto the pavement. Stopped at the red light, right in an adjacent car's line of sight, they hadn't stood a chance.

She straightened up and sighed. This was a hell of a break from pattern; something had to have spooked him.

On the far side of the car, the team went into a huddle, but Grace turned her back on them, the iron tang of two men's blood on her tongue. Instead, she surveyed the crowd. If their guy was rattled enough to break victimology and timing, then he might be driven to watch the investigation. Of course, the trouble with looking for people who looked entirely normal, was that they looked entirely normal. She ran her eyes over the spectators and press the scene had attracted, earwigging on the huddle.

"Joe Karem and Timothy Calvert," Salinas, joining them. She was as brisk and efficient as usual, if a little more stiff. "DOA. No wanteds, no warrants. They work in the area. I have detectives notifying their families."

"Sawn-off twelve gauge, close range, shot out of the driver's side window," Morgan summarised. "It's our guy, but he went way off script."

"Multiple male victims, surface street, daytime attack – and he drove his own vehicle," Rossi said. "Something triggered him that pissed him off."

"What time did this happen?" Hotch asked, as Grace wondered the same thing.

"Approximately two-twenty," Salinas told them. "Same witness said he was driving a small, blue SUV. Didn't get a plate. Middle-aged white guy, wearing a tie – suit jacket hanging in the back."

 _Nads_ , thought Grace. _Then we were the trigger._

Hotch was clearly thinking along the same lines. He looked at Rossi, who nodded. "Press conference?"

"Two-twenty," said Morgan, who had obviously come to the same conclusion. "Jordan went on the air at two o'clock. He was watchin' the news."

"You said the unsub was gonna be watchin' the coverage," Salinas pointed out.

 _Yes_ , thought Grace, still scanning the crowd. _But that's not the point._

"Twenty minutes from wherever he was watchin' the press conference, to this intersection," Rossi observed.

"He drives at speed limit," Hotch reminded them. "Taking into account red lights and midday traffic. No more than ten miles?"

"So he lives within ten miles of here," Salinas realised.

"I don't think so," said Hotch.

Detective Salinas looked between the assembled agents, puzzled. "I don't understand."

"We were wrong," Morgan explained. "He was wering a tie, suit jacket hanging in the back."

"And considering the time of day," Rossi continued.

"He works in the area," the detective finished.

Morgan took out his phone. "I'm'nna call Garcia," he said, walking a little further way out.

"You think he's gonna kill again soon, don't you," Salinas remarked, gauging their expressions.

"And he's done killing surrogates," Rossi confirmed.

With her eyes on the crowd, Grace saw Jordan Todd approaching before the others, her eyes wild and stormy; she had completely lost her cool. Grace was on the wrong side of the crime scene, however, to do much about it.

"Did you know?" Todd demanded, practically running up to Hotch, who assessed his troubled subordinate in less than a second and immediately piloted her away from the huddle, shielding her from the members of the press who were lurking beyond the tape.

"This is this is not the time or the place," he said urgently. "Are you gonna do this in front of the press?"

But Todd was too angry and too upset to listen, right now. "He killed those people because of something _I_ said!"

"No," said Hotch firmly; he was unable to prevent a little of the frustration and alarm he felt at such a public display of distress from coming through his voice and body language. "When _we_ talk to the public, it's always a possibility. It is part of the job." He paused and gave her a hard look. "Tell me now, if you can do it or not."

" _Damn right_ I can do this job!" said Todd fiercely.

"Good. You're about to give another press conference."

He stalked off, effectively ending the encounter, but it left Todd looking lost and a little vulnerable in the middle of the crime scene, which might develop into another problem – and, Grace felt, was a little unfair. She was upset enough to do something really stupid.

Grace's experience managing part of her old team kicked in, and before she knew it she was stepping lightly around the car and taking Todd's arm, walking them both briskly towards the tape line – and away from Hotch.

"Hey!"

"Come on," Grace said, without stopping. "There's a coffee shop a block away from the Sherriff's Office and you need caffeine."

"I _need_ not to be kept in the dark!" Todd snapped, wrenching her arm out of Grace's grip and bringing them both to a halt.

Fortunately, although they were closer to the tape here, this side of the scene was where most of the vehicles had rocked up, so there were fewer spectators.

"No one is keeping you in the dark," Grace hissed, imitating Hotch's method of trying to block Todd from the press across the way. She pulled her further out of the line of sight, keeping body language friendly for anyone who might be watching, but Todd wouldn't be fooled by her tone. "Don't be an infant."

Todd gaped at her, incensed. "Excuse me?"

"Jordan, you can't let them see you like this," Grace snapped. "This job is nine-tenths public confidence. Particularly for you."

Fortunately, Todd seemed to have brushed off the insult and taken stock of her colleague, because while she was clearly still angry, it wasn't the word 'infant' she chose to take offence at. She looked Grace up and down. "How can you stay so calm when –" She waved a hand in the direction of the car and its grisly forensic evidence, too angry to finish the sentence.

"Because _that's_ the job!" Grace retorted. "We all have bad days – and our bad days are on a totally different scale. They keep you up at night, they stop you forming meaningful relationships and sometimes they get people killed. It's the nature of our work. Now you just told Hotch you could do this job –" She held up a hand as Todd started to argue. "And I believe you. But you need to calm down before you give the press conference, okay? Or this is only going to get worse."

She looked at the angry, hurt, grieving woman in front of her and remembered days, early on in her career, when standing in the gore of a human life she hadn't been able to save had been almost too much to bear. There had been moments, then, when she'd decided to just turn in her warrant card and tender her resignation; maybe go into teaching, like her dad. But she's had people there for her, guiding her to coffee shops and bars, keeping her up until dawn when none of them could escape the nightmares and waking her up far too early on the brutal mornings after.

Her tone softened a little. "Listen, Jordan, no one is responsible for those deaths but the man with the shotgun, okay? And it's awful, and it kills you a little inside, but the less the public and press see us as emotional, the better for our investigation. Have a drink when get to hotel tonight, let it out behind closed doors. Rail at the dark. Do what you need to dust off the broken bits and put them back together – but do it in private." She nodded to the line of reporters beyond the tape on the far side of the cordon. "For us to do our job and put a stop to the killing, _they_ need confidence in us. We can't let them see that the 'superhuman' FBI thing is mostly an illusion."

Todd glared at her for approximately forty seconds before deflating entirely. "What kind of job _is_ this?"

"A bastard hard one," said Grace heavily. "But also one where we get to stop the monsters, if we can." She patted her arm this time, rather than taking it. "Come on. You have a press conference to prep for, and there's a mocha with your name with your name on it."

0o0

Bouncing around in the back of an SUV with Reid was not high on Grace's fun-things-to-do list, but with the road warrior locked in a high speed pursuit with the locals, there wasn't much of an option. The others were headed to the unsub's house to try to protect his family and they were closer to the chase, so that was where they were headed.

Morgan had leaped into the driver's seat, which wasn't a huge surprise – although they'd all had the training, high speed chases were kind of his forte; and Emily had jumped in beside him. So she was stuck in the back with Reid, who at some point in the last week seemed to have reverted to not speaking to her again, and was having a little trouble reconciling the information he was getting from the radio to the map on his lap while they skidded around corners.

"Uh – turn right here," said Reid abruptly.

"What? Here?" Morgan asked, surprised.

"Right, right!" Reid insisted, finally using the correct terminology. "Turn right here, turn right here!"

They flew around the corner and Grace grabbed the suit hanger thing, holding on for dear life – she still ended up practically in Reid's lap, though; it wasn't like they could wear seatbelts in this kind of chase. Not for the first time, she wondered how the hell he'd ever passed the field assessment parts of his training.

"I'm gonna need a little more notice than that, kid!" Morgan shouted back.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he gasped. "Get off me!" Angrily, he shoved Grace away and tried to untangle the map they had both inadvertently crushed.

Really, a sensible agent ought to brush off his tone and carry on, but Grace, whose ribs were already a little sore from his elbow, didn't feel like being sensible. "Oh, like I have a choice!" she snapped, feeling cross. "This is ridiculous!"

"Morgan, we'd like to get there in one piece," Emily advised her friend, from the front.

Morgan glanced at her, trying to keep as much attention on the road as he could. "Hey, if I don't get any warning –"

"Alright," Reid interrupted. "Take the next left."

Morgan shot him a look in the rear view mirror. "Where?"

"Uh – at the next light!" Reid cried out; seconds later they were careening around another corner. "Whoa – whoa!"

He winced as he slid back towards the window, trying to save his map from Grace, who had fallen against him again. This time, though, she made a grab for the radio – not a popular move with the doctor, who promptly lost his temper.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, surprised.

"Give me that!" she ordered, trying to reach it; he held the radio above his head, out of reach.

"No, get off me!" Reid retorted, but Grace was having none of it.

She leaned across him, half climbing over him to get to the radio.

"Guys." Emily's voice held a distinct tone of warning, but both of them ignored her.

"Give me the radio, I can help!" Grace snapped.

Reid got a bony elbow between them and pushed her back. "Not a chance in hell! I got the map, and –"

"Guys…" Emily said again, sharing a look with Morgan.

Figuring it was the only way she was going to get near the radio, Grace more or less climbed into Reid's lap.

"Get off me, you interfering -!"

"Ow!" she cried. " _Did you just try to bite me?"_

"No, I didn't try to bite you, you…" He managed to get the radio a little higher. "What is your _problem_?"

"Give me the bloody radio, you creepy little –"

"GUYS!" Morgan shouted, snapping them both out of it. "Where the hell do I turn?"

"Uh –" Reid stammered, but Grace had already got a finger on the map.

"Sixth and Fredrick," said Grace, wresting the radio from Reid's fingers while he was distracted. "Next left – oof!"

This time, Reid ended up in her lap; she held the radio out of his reach when he made to take it back.

"Look, you can't do it all yourself, you daft prick!" she shouted. "I'll tell you the streets, you figure out the turns!"

"But –"

"REID!" Emily yelled, from the front.

"Fine!"

For a few minutes, relative peace reigned in the car as the occupants navigated their way around the city, with Grace taking mental notes from the radio and Reid keeping track of them on the map. Focussing on the chase was a welcome relief. She was aware that at some point in the not too distant future she would feel acutely embarrassed for losing her temper like that.

"Heading west on Pacific now," said Grace, who had returned to maintaining a death grip on the suit hanger above her seat.

"Uh – you need to take the third left," said Reid, sounding much calmer and more in control. "After the intersection."

Perhaps he was also anticipating a little embarrassment.

"Thanks."

The radio made that slightly dead sound it did before each announcement, but this time it wasn't a location they were reporting. _"Shots fired. Repeat, shots fired from suspect's vehicle!"_

"He's losin' it," Morgan said. "Reid, does it look like the chase could be headed to his house?"

"Uh – yeah. Yeah, I think so," he said, consulting the map. "It looks like he's starting to go in a wide circle towards that direction."

Grace frowned. "A circle?"

Reid shot a filthy look in her direction, his temper flaring once more. "What, you think I'm wrong?"

"No," said Grace, stopping his anger in its tracks. "It's just – if he started from there…"

She trailed off and the two of them shared a speaking look. As one, they turned to the front of the car. "Call Hotch!"

Emily turned to stare at them for a moment before catching their drift and pulling out her phone. "No answer!"

"He might be drivin'," Morgan pointed out.

"I'll try Rossi…" There was a tense pause as they were connected. "Rossi – are you at the house? Okay. They're right outside," she told them, as the other agent hung up.

" _All units, pursuit now headed over Memorial Bridge."_

"Memorial Bridge," Grace parroted.

"We're almost there – turn right at the next light," Reid told Morgan. "Memorial bridge is around the next corner."

"There!" cried Grace, spotting a small blue SUV travelling well above the speed limit and moving erratically across the lanes.

"Hold on! Hold on!" Morgan yelled, and wrenched the steering wheel around.

"Morgan!" Emily exclaimed.

Reid grabbed her arm when they started spinning, crashing against her; Grace held on, too – there wasn't any point trying to get out of the tangle of limbs until they broke out of the centrifugal force, anyway.

"You good?" Morgan asked, when the car had done a one-eighty and it felt less like Grace's head was going to explode.

Reid managed to extract himself from her and pull himself over to the other window; she fiercely ignored the treacherous part of her that had responded favourably to his proximity and smell.

"We're good!" Emily said urgently. "Go! Go!"

"Ow." Reid hit the far side of the car again. Grace slid across the back seat and collided with him once more.

"Oof – argh, sorry!"

"It's okay," he said, massaging his arm where it had hit the window.

He didn't even bother try to shove her away, this time.

"Grace – get on the radio and tell 'em we're with the chase," Morgan instructed.

"This is the FBI behavioural analysis unit," said Grace, hauling herself back away from her colleague. "We've caught up to the chase and are now monitoring. We ask if you are able to stop the vehicle, you'll allow us to take the lead in contacting the driver. We believe him to be a severely deranged suspect."

" _Copy."_

"Assuming we're not too late," Reid muttered, his eyes on the car they were pursuing.

They were almost on them when Norman Hill's car span out of control, colliding with the patrol car behind it and smashing into the concrete barrier; it flipped on its side and skidded to a halt.

Morgan swerved hard, bringing them to a hair raising, but safe, halt; feeling a little weak legged, they got out and aimed their guns at the Road Warrior, a bloodied, delusional mess crawling out of the front windscreen of his car.

Fuelled by the adrenaline of the chase and the near-fatal crash, the local officers were shouting at Hill to hit the deck, but he wasn't responding. He was in shock, Grace realised. She started moving forward, but Morgan's voice broke out above the tumult, yelling for people to back off. His manner suggested that the news he'd got on the phone as they fell out of the car had not been good.

He made it out beyond the line of cars, and the locals stayed put, happy to let the BAU do their thing.

"Listen! Stop, Norman! Norman! Stop! Listen!" Morgan yelled, but it wasn't doing a great deal.

"You don't understand, my family's inside!" Hill wailed, staggering forward, begging for help.

"Listen to me!" Morgan screamed as the rest of the team fanned out behind him, their guns up and steady. "Nobody is in that car!"

"Oh God," Reid breathed, a pace away from her.

"They were at the house, then," Grace said darkly.

Emily moved out across the car in front of them, keeping Morgan covered. "We were too late."

"No!"

"Your family's gone, Norman!"

"No – no, they're in there," Hill sobbed, and stumbled back towards the car.

"They're gone, Norman," Morgan insisted. "Look inside! Look in the car! Look in the car! They were never there!"

Hill, who seemed to be beginning to come back to an unfriendly reality, did as he was told.

"It's over," said Morgan, more gently. "They were never with you."

"No, but they were!" Hill insisted, confusion and grief written in every fibre of his being. "They were!"

Morgan dropped his voice a little, aware that he was getting through to him. "Your family is gone, Norman."

There was a moment of total uncertainty, where Hill could have gone either way.

 _Come on,_ Grace urged mentally, _give up. No one else has to die today._

"Oh God," he gasped, at last, lucidity catching up with him at last. "What did I do? What did I do to my family? I kill- I killed –"

Morgan, taking advantage of the man's distraction, took him out, grabbed his arms and got him to the ground.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Hill wailed, entirely breaking down.

"It's over, Norman," Morgan said, cuffing him. "We're gonna get you some help. Come on, get up."

0o0

 _There's no tragedy in life, but the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were._

 _Dwight Eisenhower_


	8. Fire and Ice

**Essential Listening: Be With You, by Avid Dancer**

0o0

It was dark when they landed at the airstrip outside of Quantico, and those of them who had been dozing in the jet shook themselves awake and dragged themselves towards the ranks of SUVs that lived in the parking garage.

Morgan and Hotch got in the first one, probably in order for the former to complain privately about her and Reid's stupidity in Orange County, Grace felt. She had intended to take the fourth place in the next one, with Prentiss, Rossi and Todd, but they took off before she got her thoughts in order and she was left staring at the last car, disconsolately.

Reid rolled down the driver's side window and called out impatiently, "Are you coming, or what?"

For a moment, she stayed where she was, debating the merits of calling a taxi, but in the end she was too weary of cases with bad endings, so she gave up, threw her bag in the back and climbed in the front with him. She pulled her mobile out and chucked it on the dashboard, where it wouldn't be poking her in the leg.

They had been driving in silence for several minutes when Reid made a sort of frustrated huffing noise and shot her a dark glance. "Sorry," he said, rather churlishly.

Grace, who had been idly letting her eyes slide over the leafless trees outside, rolling past like winter ghosts, turned to him, astonished. "What?"

"I said, I'm sorry," he repeated, sounding annoyed at the necessity of speaking. "You were right. I should have just given you the radio."

Grace narrowed her eyes, her ribs still quite sore from the (largely) accidental bruising they had picked up during the chase. "You shouldn't have tried to bite me," she pointed out, feeling that his apology would have meant a little more if it hadn't sounded quite so grudging.

" _You_ shouldn't have hit me!" he replied, sharply, clearly thinking of another argument.

"I –" Grace clamped her mouth shut, rolled her eyes and glared out of the passenger side window.

He was right, of course. Violence didn't solve anything (unless someone was trying to kill you), and all it really did was make things worse. But after what he had said to her… Bringing up her father's death had been possibly the most hurtful thing he could have done. She had thought he had understood how hard it had been to trust him with even some of her secrets – especially after everything that had happened to her in London. Not that he knew the specifics, of course, she reminded herself, but he was a profiler, and a bloody good one, who should be able to read that in her and act with a little more decorum.

It had taken a great deal for her to even begin to open up to him, and he had used it to say stupid, spiteful things that he knew would drive her away, just because he didn't like what she was trying to tell him. But then, he hadn't had much in the way of objectivity that day. That had been the problem.

Grace chewed her lip, forcing herself not to say the words she dearly wanted to. She'd had enough arguing to last her a lifetime, of late.

Reid spoke again, spitting out the words as if they had personally insulted him. "I ought to have asked for your help with the radio."

"I should have been more polite." Grace sighed and rubbed her face, wishing she didn't have to have this conversation. "We've got to be able to work together," she said, quietly. "We don't have the luxury of not getting on when there are lives on the line."

"I know," he said, and it seemed that a lot of the fight had gone out of him, too. "You just make it so hard to –"

" _I_ make it hard?" she asked, incredulous. "I'm not the one who's always glaring, or snapping, or shutting me down, or –"

" _I know,_ " he retorted angrily, his voice over-loud. It was his turn to sigh. "I know," he said again, more quietly.

He fell silent and Grace didn't feel the need to interrupt it; she couldn't think of a thing to say. She turned back to the window, wishing she was somewhere else. They had been so close before, when silences hadn't felt oppressive, and every five words hadn't turned into an argument. It was a deeply uncomfortable thing knowing that (whatever else they had almost been), the trust and friendship they had shared had gone along with everything else.

It made her chest hurt.

They didn't speak again until they pulled into the parking garage beneath Quantico.

She had expected him to get out as soon as the car pulled up, but he didn't. Instead, he sat still, fiddling with his keys. Wondering what he was thinking, Grace stayed quiet, regarding him. It struck her that it had been weeks since they had been quiet in the same place; even longer since she had properly looked at him. Reid looked as tired as she felt.

"I – uh," he began, eyes fixed on the steering wheel. He licked his lips, as if his mouth had gone dry. Or perhaps it was indecision. Either way, he didn't seem to want to continue.

"What?" she asked gently, when the silence went on for too long.

He cleared his throat. "I miss you."

Grace's mouth fell open. After all the anger and bitterness he had displayed over the weeks since Las Vegas, the admission took her by surprise. It was the last thing she would have expected him to say. Reid didn't look up – just kept on playing with the keys, moving them between his fingers. Grace followed his gaze; in that moment it was easier than looking at him.

"I miss you, too."

Sadly, he looked up at her. It felt, for a moment, as if the wall they had been carefully maintaining between them was finally coming down. In the stillness, over the sounds of the car's engine cooling, the two agents gazed at one another. Reid opened his mouth to speak.

"Do you want to –"

On the dashboard, Grace's phone started to buzz, the vibrations shattering the peace that had fallen between them. Reid licked his lips and frowned down at the keys. "Aren't you going to get that?" he asked, a note of something darker creeping back in his voice.

"Er – yes," she said, reaching for it.

"Don't want to keep Lily waiting," he said, almost snapping again.

He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him, a little over-hard. Grace was surprised at the bitterness she detected there.

"Hey, Troy," she said, more lightly than she felt, watching Reid's back. He was just standing outside the car, glaring off into the distance, his entire frame held tensely. "No, it's not a bad time. We just landed."

Slowly, feeling strangely off-kilter, Grace slipped out of the car and got her case. "Sure. I just need to drop some stuff off in the office."

She rounded the back of the car almost warily, not entirely sure she wanted to see Reid's expression, but he saved her the trouble by already being half inside the vehicle, fetching out his bag.

" _You still there?"_

"Yes, sorry. It's – er – it's been a long day."

Leaving Reid to book the SUV back in, she started for the lifts, loitering further back from the others while they waited for everyone to return from the booking station. Just ahead, Morgan, and Prentiss were clustered around Todd, keeping conversation going, stopping her from dwelling. She glanced towards the little office that handled the signing in and out of Bureau vehicles. Rossi and Hotch must have been waiting in there for Reid to catch them up.

" _You sound like you need some cheerin' up."_

Despite the strange other-worldly feeling she had in her chest, she smiled. "Maybe. What did you have in mind?"

" _You any good at ice-skating?"_

"I don't know, never tried," she admitted, scuffing her shoe against the concrete.

" _Well hey, there's a first time for everythin'. You game?"_

"Why not?" she decided. "I've got a few things to drop off here, and then I'll head home – am I going to need warm clothes?"

" _Yeah, the rink's outdoors," said Troy. "You want I should pick up somethin' to eat on the way?"_

Her lips quirked upwards. "Are you trying to butter me up?"

" _Why not? I kinda like the idea of lookin' out for you on bad days."_

She laughed. "I guess, sometimes it's nice to be spoiled. Thai food?"

" _Hot, got an eye for a sweet engine, happy to spend time with me_ and _likes Thai food?"_ Troy chuckled. She imagined him standing in his garage, smudges of dirt on his skin, grinning at the air. _"Grace Pearce, where have you been all my life?"_

"Oh, you know," she said, already feeling lighter of heart. "Around."

The sound of footsteps approaching made her look up; Hotch, Rossi and Reid were returning from the booking office. Whatever had been going through his mind before, Reid appeared to have regained his composure. He walked past her without a backwards glance.

" _So, I could pick you up at seven?"_

"Better make it eight," she said, turning away. "Just in case the AMTRAK's rammed."

" _You got it, pretty lady."_

She laughed. "Hey, I'm about to go into the lift, so I'm guessing I'll lose you. See you at eight?"

" _See you then."_

"Hot date?" Rossi asked, as they filed into the lift.

Grace rolled her eyes. Your life wasn't your own around here. "Cold date."

Rossi raised an eyebrow.

"We're going ice-skating."

"Ooh," said Emily, as Todd whistled. "Romantic."

"You guys are…" she trailed off and laughed, pleased that Todd had forgiven her for her earlier lecture – and recovered a little from the horror that had been waiting for the team at the Hill residence.

Discovering the bodies of Norman Hill's family had been particularly hard on their temporary Media Liaison, particularly given the heartfelt plea she had (potentially inadvisably) added to the second press conference. For some unsubs, that would have been the only excuse that they needed to hurt more people, but with Hill it hadn't mattered. He had slaughtered his wife and daughters in their sleep after the first shooting, unable to reconcile his youngest daughter's death with his new, delusional reality.

At least it had left Judy Hannity off the hook, somewhat. These murders had been precipitated by Jennifer Hill's accidental death – no one could have prevented something like this from happening, in the long run. Hill had been tiptoeing on the edge of sanity for a while – it was never going to take much to tip him the rest of the way over it.

Todd's subsequent admission to Rossi, that she didn't think she could do the job, was a positive sign. If she could admit when she was feeling vulnerable, then she just might be okay. Looking at her, Grace felt the woman was probably on firmer ground now than she had been this morning.

It was strange, really; Grace often forgot that Todd was a couple of years older than her – but then, Grace had skipped a few years in school and been a street bobby, jaded by the time she was twenty-two. For all Todd's involvement with counter-terrorism, she hadn't had to face the same kinds of darkness.

Grace had a feeling Emily and Rossi were going to take the woman out to a bar later on, which would help. You needed good people at your back on days like this.

She leaned against the back of the lift, a foot away from Reid, who had also ended up at the tail-end of the bunch. He didn't look at her, but his expression was calm; he felt very distant – much more so than he had in the SUV. The wall between them seemed to have been quite firmly rebuilt. It wasn't exactly a comfortable feeling, but it was, at least, tolerable.

Whatever had been about to happen in the car was quite definitely back off the table.

They stepped out of the lift side by side, Grace feeling very much as though they had just discovered a new way of entirely avoiding one another.

Ahead, Morgan addressed Todd. "You alright?"

"I will be," she said, and Grace believed her. She spared her a smile as the young agent hurried off towards her office.

"Hey, you guys ever notice how the trip home always seems to go so much faster?" Emily asked, sounding tired.

"That's because the tailwinds are in our favour," Reid told her.

"And we've already experienced it once – our brains don't feel the same need to record it, the second time," Grace added.

Reid nodded.

"No, I meant cause…" Emily trailed off, sighed and gave up. "Anyone else wanna get something to eat?"

"Not really," Morgan responded.

"You?" Rossi asked.

"No, not really," Emily replied, rethinking her suggestion.

Everyone started to head for their desks, but Reid, who had paused by the door, stopped them. "There's someone in the situation room, guys."

He started up the steps to the back door of the little room, and the rest of the team followed, their curiosity getting the better of them. In the room, her back to the window, was –

"JJ!" said Grace, happily.

"What're you doing here?" Reid asked, all remaining tension evaporating.

Emily gasped as she rounded the corner. "JJ!"

"Garcia said you guys were on your way back tonight," said JJ, as they crowded around her. "Thought you could use a surprise."

Emily dropped her bag on the floor and immediately went to pull a face at baby Henry. "Hi!" she said, faking a gasp for him because it held his attention.

"I thought I gave you strict orders to get this place out of your head for a while," said Hotch, from near the back.

JJ simply grinned at him.

"My bad," said Garcia, emerging from the door with a bottle of milk. "I couldn't help myself. Here. I heated it up – room temp, right?"

"I just realised with all that we do and see in this room, no one ever smiles," said JJ, as Garcia fussed over the baby. "I wanted at least one good memory to hold onto."

"Jayj, you big softie," said Grace, but she was beaming along with all the others.

Morgan made his way to the front. "'Scuse me kid," he said, brushing past Reid. "Um, JJ, can I?" he asked, gesturing to the baby.

"Yeah, of course!"

She passed him over and both Emily and Garcia immediately started panicking.

"'Kay you gotta hold his head up," said Emily, every inch the worried aunt. "Careful, careful!" She winced; JJ ignored it. Morgan was doing fine.

"I got it, I got it," Morgan assured them.

Garcia glared at him. "No, you don't got it – you're smothering him!"

Grace decided to intervene before it could get out of hand. "He's fine, guys," she said, stepping around Morgan and adjusting Henry's blanket so he was more comfy without even thinking. She stroked his cheek gently with her knuckle and he settled happily in Morgan's arms. "See, he's all snuggly."

"What's he doin'? What's he doin'?" Morgan asked, turning so the others could see Henry's face. "He is _smiling_ at Derek Morgan."

Emily and Garcia turned to each other in unison, looking highly sceptical. "Gas," they both said at once.

Morgan gave them both a withering look. "Gimme that," he said, taking the bottle from Garcia.

Rossi chuckled, enjoying the familial scene unfolding before him; Reid only had eyes for Henry, as usual – and, for once, so did Grace. It was strangely easy to breathe.

 _Personal growth_ , she thought and then laughed at herself.

"There you go, man," said Morgan, as Henry gulped down milk.

JJ laughed, backing off and letting her son's surrogate aunts and uncles absorb some of Henry's sweetness. She glanced up at Hotch. "You're smiling," she pointed out.

He gave her a sideways look, caught in the act, as it were. "Gas."

They laughed and looked over in time to see Grace shaking her head at them.

Hotch pulled a face at her, which made her break off into giggles that no one but he and JJ understood. He turned to JJ. "We miss you."

0o0

"Okay, so just put your weight on me."

Grace did as she was told, feeling very dubious about the whole thing. She could barely stand in the ice skates when she'd first put them on, and that was _before_ she stepped foot on the ice. It didn't seem to matter how she held her legs, her feet seemed to want to shoot out in all directions; it was profoundly unsettling when you were used to your limbs being steady. She didn't remember a time when her body had felt so unreliable.

And that was another thing. When you routinely put total trust in the people you worked with in life or death situations, it was peculiarly difficult transferring that trust to someone else, even if he was your boyfriend and he was trying to teach you to skate.

The possibility of slipping and breaking every one of her bones was not lost on her, and it rendered the entire experience a lot more terrifying than it probably should have been.

It really didn't help that she couldn't stop giggling. It was equal parts terror and mirth, on the ice, and it was making her stomach hurt. She was going to kill Hotch for making her laugh on Monday, his uncharacteristic mood putting her into a state of hilarity that had not left her before she met Troy at the rink. Of course, killing her boss would have to wait if she spent the next week getting casts fitted.

"You gotta trust the skates," Troy said, leading her gently out across the rink. "And the ice."

"It looks distinctly suspicious, from where I'm almost standing," she quipped, and shot the receding fence line a mournful look. "Do we have to come out this far?"

"Yes," he said, grinning. "The weird thing about skating is, you fall over less often if you go faster."

"You also hit the ground with more force," Grace grumbled, but she made an effort to straighten up. Then she paused. "Why are you laughing at me?"

"Because you're skittering around on the ice, gigglin' like an idiot," he told her. "You can't bear that you don't have control over this – or your own feet – and that cross little look that keeps creepin' over your face is so damn cute."

Grace tried to glare at him, she really did. "Nice save."

"I thought so."

He had that mildly infuriating, deeply attractive glint in his eye, now. Grace wasn't sure if he knew how tempting it was to give in and let him have his way.

"Fine. Okay, let go."

Troy loosened his grip on her arms until he was only holding her fingertips. "There you go – that's right." He shot her an electric grin. "You're doing great, Grace."

Grace swallowed. "Okay…"

"Now try to stand up straight."

Grace shot him a look. For some reason, her body wouldn't respond – she was so afraid of falling that she was bending forward at a ridiculous angle and completely unable to convince herself not to be.

"Relax," said Troy, and let go of her hands.

"No, wait –" she exclaimed, but he'd already moved away. Grace stayed as still as possible, feeling wobbly and a little panicked, convinced she was about to pitch forward and sprawl across the rink.

"Here," he said, pressing a gentle hand to her back.

Breathing hard, she straightened up, her feet still feeling a bit skittish. She forced herself to relax.

"See?" he said. "There you go. It's like dancing. The less you think about it, the easier it'll get."

The corners of Grace's mouth quirked upwards; his hand was warm on the small of her back and she could feel his breath tickling the back of her neck. It felt strange and pleasant all at once – and it was really doing wonders for taking her mind off her present predicament.

"That's much better," she said, feeling altogether calmer about the idea of falling on the ice.

"You wanna try going for a skate?" he asked.

Grace grinned. "Are you asking me to dance, Troy?"

"Milady," she said, offering her an arm.

"So chivalrous."

It took a while, but by the end of a few hours practice she was beginning to get the hang of it, even staying on her feet well enough to accompany her tutor around the rink several times without toppling over – until the very last people had left, at least. Troy had just turned and congratulated her on her progress – then, of course, one foot skidded out in front of the other and she toppled ungracefully over, taking him out with her.

"Oof!"

"Ow…"

"Sorry," said Grace, trying and failing to raise herself up on the ice. She lost her purchase and slumped back against his chest.

Troy chuckled, not remotely put out. "I'm jus' glad you had a soft landing."

"Sorry about that," she said again, but this time she smiled, too. "Can't say it isn't comfy."

"Glad about that part, too," he said, as she pressed a hand on his chest, raising herself up. Her honey coloured hair fell about her face, and Troy tucked it behind her ear. "I gotta tell you, Agent Pearce, I'm thinkin' about kissin' you."

She gazed into his green eyes, thoughtfully, for a moment. "Is that so?"

"Yes ma'am." He cracked a devilish grin. "Can't lie to an officer of the law."

He drawled the last word a little, and it tugged at her stomach. Grace bit her lip. "Well then, I have to tell you, Mr Jackson, that great minds think alike."


	9. Model Citizen

**Essential listening: Utopia, by Alanis Morissette**

0o0

Emily Prentiss strolled across the parking lot at Quantico, enjoying the snap of frost in the air. It was two weeks to Christmas, still, and she had already booked her tickets home – not that home was a place she really wanted to be. Her mother had already told her about three separate parties she was organising, and Emily knew perfectly well that as the daughter of an ambassador she would be expected to be on duty the entire time. At least Christmas Day and Eve would be just her and her parents.

Though, of course, that would probably mean two whole days of criticism and grilling over when she would finally provide them with grandchildren, but she could handle that.

Probably.

Honestly, in some ways she would have preferred going toe to toe with a serial killer, but you didn't always get what you want (and in the back of her mind she knew it wasn't ever quite as bad as she imagined).

She turned onto the sidewalk that led to the front door and paused. About twenty feet ahead of her, a car had pulled up. Nothing unusual there, of course – it was a parking lot, and a quarter to eight on a weekday was when this parking lot saw quite a bit of traffic. That was the kind of thing that happened. What _was_ surprising was that Grace Pearce was leaning into the window on the drivers' side of a car that definitely wasn't hers, quite enthusiastically kissing the driver.

"Well, well," Emily said to herself, and waited, amused, until Grace straightened up and the car drove off.

As it passed her, she caught a glimpse of a rather attractive young man wearing mechanic's overalls, checking Grace out in his rear view mirror. Emily chuckled, and hurried to catch her friend up.

"Hey," she said, matching her pace. "Good morning."

"Morning," Grace replied cheerfully, without a trace of inkling that she'd just been caught snogging her boyfriend in the Quantico parking lot. "Good weekend?"

"Not bad," said Emily, who had spent much of it Christmas shopping. "Ice-skating go well?"

Grace nodded, a small smile playing about her lips. "You could say that."

Emily snorted. "So I saw," she observed, and grinned as Grace's head snapped around. "Oh, come on – you were right in front of the main building. Of course someone was gonna see you."

"I suppose I could have thought that out a little better," her friend conceded, and Emily laughed.

"Still, he's pretty cute," she remarked. "Though if his name's Lily, then all my expectations are off."

It was Grace's turn to laugh. "Yeah, about that…"

0o0

"So the cat's out of the bag?" Garcia asked, almost mournfully, as she, Grace and Emily rode the elevator up to the floor the agents of the BAU practically lived in.

"Sorry," said Grace, "my fault. My self-control was not functioning this morning."

"Rawr," said Garcia, miming cat claws, and they all laughed.

"Well, it doesn't have to be all the way out," Emily reasoned. "I, for one, have no problem yanking Morgan's chain – and frankly, Reid's being a total ass about Vegas. I'll keep it up if you guys want to."

Grace made a face. "To be fair, I did punch him in the face," she said. "We were neither of us paragons of good behaviour in that instance."

Emily glanced at her friend. So far, she had avoided talking about the incident in the hotel lobby; Reid had skirted around it, too, though he had been far readier to complain about his fellow combatant. Now, though, she seemed tired of the whole thing – resigned, perhaps – tired enough to get it off her chest.

"Still, Morgan told me what he said," Emily offered, sharing a look with Garcia.

"Yeah, I woulda smacked him," Garcia agreed.

"Mmm," Grace grunted, frowning. "That part is less easy to forgive." She sighed. "I really thought I could trust him, you know? And then..." She shook her head and rolled her eyes all at once. "I mean, he was having the mother of all bad days, but still," she added, almost to herself.

Garcia winced in Emily's general direction. Perhaps she shouldn't have brought it up – but it had been weeks now, and if they let her bottle it up it would just fester, and then the two of them would just stay where they were, bickering like teenagers and driving everyone crazy.

Emily kind of missed the time when the two of them had been weirdly close and no one could work out if they were dating or not. At least it was more peaceful.

"We kind of had a talk when we got back from Orange County," said Grace, unexpectedly.

"You and Reid?" Emily asked, surprised.

She nodded. "Not much of one, but," she said, and gave a sideways jerk of her head – somewhere between annoyed and confused. "He apologised for trying to bite me."

"That's goo-," Emily began, but Garcia interrupted.

"Wait, Reid _bit_ you?" she demanded, aghast.

"Oh, there was this whole thing in the car," said Emily, as Grace nodded, managing to give the impression that it wasn't a big deal. "I'll tell you later."

"You better! I miss out on all the fun!"

To Emily's relief, Grace laughed. "Yep, it's a twenty-four hour party out there," she quipped. "We only pretend to be chasing psychopaths so no one catches on."

Garcia stuck her tongue out at her.

Emily chuckled, glad the awkwardness that had come with talking about her falling out with Reid had passed. "So, can we take it from the fact your self-control was malfunctioning that it's going okay with your mechanic?" she asked, eager to prolong the more pleasant mood.

Grace laughed, her cheeks turning just the right amount of pink to make Garcia giggle. "Yeah, I think you could say that."

"So, spill," said Garcia, as they stepped out of the elevator. "You went ice-skating on Friday, and…"

"And I fell over a _lot_ ," Grace admitted. "I was like a dog wearing roller skates."

Both women burst out laughing as she pushed the door to the bull-pen open and walked inside, drawing curious glances from both Reid, who was checking his emails, and Morgan, who was sitting on Reid's desk, clearly in a procrastinatory sort of mood.

"Not so romantic, then?" Emily asked, snorting.

"Not so much," Grace agreed, dropping her bag at her desk. "I have bruises on my bruises."

"Aww, I bet Lily helped kiss 'em better," Garcia teased, conscious of their audience.

Grace's cheeks went even pinker; she looked up at her friend, her head tilted to one side, pretending to think about it. "You know, that did help, actually."

"I take it your hot date went well?" Morgan asked, eager to join in.

"Not bad, thanks," said Grace lightly.

"Aww, come on Pearce, you can do better than that," he complained, and continued to press her for information.

Emily, however, was watching Reid out of the corner of her eye. He had stiffened as soon as 'Lily's' name had been mentioned, and although he was doing a pretty good job of hiding it (and Grace wasn't paying enough attention to spot it), he was now glaring squarely at his inbox, not even making an attempt at typing.

 _So_ , she thought. _You're not a fan of Grace's new 'girlfriend'. Interesting._

Clearly, he wasn't as over their odd little relationship as he had been resolutely pretending. If that were true then the cold, grumpy shoulder he had been offering her since Vegas had less to do with a bruised jaw and more to do with a bruised ego.

 _He's probably more pissed at himself for saying something that stupid and hurtful, but he's transferring it all onto Grace instead of dealing with it,_ she guessed. _Which means, in all likelihood, he still has some pretty deep feelings for her._

Suddenly, Emily wondered what would happen if they pushed it. If, like Grace had hinted, he had offered a kind of grudging olive branch, would he make the effort to let the 'Lily' thing go, or would he keep up the wounded innocent act?

They both deserved to be happy – and Grace certainly seemed more cheerful since Troy had come on the scene. With any luck, Reid would be able to move on and find someone that made him smile the way Grace had when Garcia teased her about her self-control in the elevator.

 _And if they're really, really lucky,_ Emily thought, recalling how close their two youngest agents had always seemed, _they'll figure out how to have significant others and still be friends._

"I think it's cute," said Garcia, plainly enjoying the less than impressed expression on Grace's face. "Oh, oh! Did she catch you when you fell?"

"She did, actually," Grace said, with a genuine smile. "I guess that was pretty romantic."

"Well, it had to be going pretty well," said Jordan, approaching from the situation room. She shot Grace a wicked smile. "I saw you kissing her on the way into work this morning."

"What?" Morgan asked, delighted. "Pearce, you got moves!"

"Oh _Gods_ ," Grace exclaimed, letting her head fall back in exasperation. "Did _everyone_ see?"

Agent Anderson, who had been walking past with his arms full of files and had obviously heard just enough of the conversation, grinned and said, "Yes," before carrying on towards his own desk.

"Oh, not you, _too!_ "

Emily could hear the young agent laughing from halfway across the room. She shook her head at him; that guy had a knack for appearing at just the right moments.

"That's what you get for making out on government property," Jordan teased, with a grin; the other woman groaned.

Emily watched out of the corner of her eye as Reid got up – not too quickly, so as not to catch anyone's attention – with a very tight expression on his face and walked off towards the bathrooms, obviously preferring not to hear any more.

"Come on, Jordan – what'd she look like?" Morgan asked, putting a conspiratorial arm around their temporary Media Liaison's shoulders. "Pearce won't tell us."

"I said she was smokin' hot," Grace reminded him.

"Yeah, but that's hardly objective, c'mon."

She pulled a face at him.

"Actually, I didn't get a good look, sorry," said Todd, laughing.

"Aw, man!"

"I hate to break this up, bambini," said Rossi. "But we got a case."

Emily turned to find him watching them all, his hands on his hips, with considerable amusement. She wondered how long he had been there – and whether he, too, had seen Reid's rather terse departure. If he had, he didn't give any indication.

"Yes," said Jordan, immediately shrugging Morgan's arm away. "Yes, sir, we have."

She hurried off, and Morgan rolled his eyes at Rossi, who shrugged.

"You are never gonna get anywhere with her," said the older man, entertained. "Give it up."

"I would be doin' fine if you didn't keep interruptin'," Morgan informed him.

"Eh, bambini," said Grace, imitating Rossi's accent.

Emily fell into step with Grace and followed the good-natured bickering up the steps. To her surprise, Garcia went with them. Generally, she avoided the situation room if she could, because of the likelihood of disturbing images being up on the screen, unless Hotch had specifically asked for her.

"Branching out?" Emily asked, as they all started taking their seats and Jordan passed out the files.

"Oh, no, I have an announcement when everyone –" She looked up, saw that Hotch and Reid were heading in and grinned. "And now you're all here! Okay, my fearless warriors for karma, the proliferation of tinsel and fake snow about the office should be enough to tell you all that we're heading straight into the holiday season," she said. "And I think I speak for us all when I say thank you for putting us on the outbound rota this year, boss," she added, in Hotch's direction.

"Yeah, man," Morgan agreed. "We could all do with a break."

"It's just our turn," Hotch reminded them, but the corner of his mouth quirked up anyway.

"Well, we're all grateful you didn't let anyone upstairs forget that," Garcia told him, to several chuckles. "Anyway, I am here to remind you lovely people that since yuletide is well and truly upon us, I will be sending out your randomised Secret Santa assignments by the end of today."

"You guys do Secret Santa?" Jordan asked, as several people groaned.

"Oh, yes," said Emily. "It's, uh –" She glanced at their enthusiastic technician. "A tradition."

"And therefore no one is safe," Grace added, earning herself a thwack on the shoulder.

"Every one of my babies is included," said Garcia, in a slightly arch manner that made Emily meet Morgan's eyes and turn away quickly, before their friend saw her expression. "And that means you, too, Jordan – and JJ."

"JJ's still in?" Reid asked, brightening up a little at the mention of his friend. "I had a great idea for her, last year."

"No one gets to pick, though," Emily reminded him, and he pulled a face.

"Anyway, that's all I had," said Garcia, brightly. "You will receive your texts later today – don't tell anyone who you have, or I'll change your credit scores to something despicable. And I will leave you to it before the ick-factor in here increases. Hit me when you need me, people!"

She hurried away, leaving a room full of agents behind her, each fondly watching her go and wondering how to get out of the annual tradition they all pretended to hate.

"Do you think she'd really change our credit scores?" Rossi asked, entertained.

Hotch shrugged, giving his team a rare smile. "I'd rather not find out."

"On that note," said Jordan, clicking the remote to advance the screen. "We've had a call from a detective in Clackamas County, just outside of Portland, Oregon," she told them, then paused as they regained their focus. "Now, this is a bit of a weird one, guys, so bear with me. This is Gretchen Ross," she said, as a middle-aged woman's picture appeared on the screen. "Forty-five years old, a middle school teacher in Happy Valley. Three weeks ago, she died in a car wreck on her way to a parent-teacher evening."

"A car wreck?" Reid asked, puzzled.

Rossi frowned. "An accident?"

"So the police thought," said Todd. "Five days later, another resident, a thirty-one year old painter-decorator named Andy Kirwan lost control of his car in Harmony Point and crashed into the wall of Trader Joe's. He was killed outright."

"And then the police went back and looked over the first crash?" Emily asked, frowning down at the file.

"No," said Jordan. "Six days after the second car-wreck, a woman called Davina Bishop was found dead in her swimming pool," she told them, and brought up the bloated images. "Davina was a clothing designer who made a name for herself in the seventies, so her death was a bit of a local sensation. The detective assigned the case, Leah Marr, found no evidence of foul play. Ms Bishop was alone at home and drinking. She was fully clothed when she went in the pool, except for her shoes."

"So she took them off intending to get in," Emily guessed. "She was tipsy and went for an ill-advised swim."

"Two car crashes and a drowning don't make much of a pattern," Grace pointed out.

"They don't," Jordan agreed. "One week ago, a local bus driver named Ian Alvarez was fixing the satellite dish on the side of his house, when he lost his footing and fell. The ladder broke apart." The photo of the scene appeared on the screen. "His head injuries were pretty severe, and he died in hospital three days later."

"All of these deaths are accidental – things that could happen to anyone," Morgan reflected, frowning.

"Yes," said Todd. "And no."

She looked pensive, which was unusual. Jordan's expressions were usually written all over her face. Perhaps her experiences in Orange County had begun to change her.

"What makes the detective in Oregon think they're connected?" Hotch asked, also assessing his temporary agent's expression.

Jordan changed the display on the screen to what looked like an aerial view of the town – but there was something wrong with it, like the scale was off somehow.

"What are we looking at?" Emily asked, leaning forwards.

"This is a diorama of the area, made to celebrate fifty years since incorporation a couple of years ago," Jordan explained. "It's currently on display at the heart of Happy Valley's City Hall. Apparently it's quite a tourist attraction."

"That's a model?" Grace asked, surprised. "Wow."

"What does this have to do with our deaths?" Rossi asked, frowning.

"Two days ago, a school party was viewing the model," said Jordan, zooming in on a particular area. "One of the kids spotted this."

On the model, a tiny car had crashed into the wall of a brick-built building.

Emily raised her eyebrows. "Is that –"

"Trader Joe's," Jordan confirmed. "The colour, make and model of the car match the one Andy Kirwan was driving when he died. So does the car's registration number, and –" She zoomed in again, close enough to see a tiny man crushed inside the front of his car. "Those are the clothes Kirwan was wearing that day."

Morgan whistled. "Now that's commitment."

"It's also pretty morbid," Grace observed.

"But it doesn't mean there's a serial murderer," said Reid, as if he were finishing her thought.

Emily glanced over at them. They were sitting across the table from one another, and neither one was looking at the other, but Grace was nodding. Neither of them looked uncomfortable, and neither of them looked annoyed. Their cohesion of thought had been so much the way they used to be that it took her aback a little. Hotch, too, had half a hopeful eye on them, probably thinking of the ability to get through a case without an argument.

"Unless there are more," Rossi commented.

"There are," said Jordan, bringing up a tiny Toyota in a ditch, a man sprawled on the concrete driveway of his home, and a woman wearing an evening dress, floating face-down in her pool. "And they weren't alone. There was one more – Marcus Fowler, forty-seven." She brought up both the tiny model of what looked like quite a gruesome death, and the accompanying crime scene photographs. "Family man, worked as the sports coach at a local school – not the same one as Mrs Ross. He was beaten to death with his own baseball bat."

Emily grimaced. The Louisville slugger was displayed pre-processing beside the image of the stricken man, blood, hair and bits of skull stuck to the shaft. On the model, the bat was on the ground near the victim, discarded by the murderer.

"This death was obviously not an accident," Jordan said. "And there had been other deaths in the area in the month following it, but only these five people had been singled out for display on the model."

"Suggesting that someone has a vested interest in just these five," Morgan said. "Maybe our unsub felt he wasn't getting the attention he deserved."

"Have they confirmed that the other deaths were murders?" Hotch asked.

"Uh, the first two – the car wrecks – their brake lines were cut," said Reid, quickly absorbing the forensic report in his file. "Detective Marr had Davina Bishop's body exhumed – uh – looks like there was subdermal bruising that didn't show at autopsy."

"She was held under," said Hotch, as they all flicked to the part of their file that showed deep finger-shaped bruises quite clearly across the woman's shoulders.

"And the model?" Grace asked, interested.

Jordan nodded, and brought up an image of the tiny drowning victim's body, complete with miniscule painted bruises – matching the pattern on the second autopsy picture almost exactly.

"The falling victim's ladder was almost sawn through in several places."

"They didn't spot that straight away?" Morgan asked, aghast.

"Uh – I guess his wife just thought he'd slipped," said Reid, still reading at lightning speed. "So no one checked."

"But she kept the pieces?" Emily queried.

"Yeah."

"Maybe she just hadn't got round to doing anything with them," Grace suggested. "There's a lot to do when someone dies."

"Lucky she did," said Rossi. "Or we might never have connected them – without the model."

"And there'll be tool marks to match it to," Emily mused. "Are we certain the wife had nothing to do with it, by the way?"

"What, and the person making the models is a concerned citizen, pointing out a series of domestic murders?" Morgan groused. "Come on, Prentiss. I know crime figures are high across the US, but five people in one small city in one month is a little much."

"Low risk victims like these are more than twenty times more likely to be murdered by a family member or close friend," Reid supplied, not even looking up from the file he was holding.

"Alright, kid, and how many people live there?" Morgan asked, rolling his eyes.

"Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and three."

"How do you even just know that?" Grace remarked, sending a marked glance in Reid's direction. She put up her hand when he looked up, ready to defend the figure. "I believe you. Just saying." Reid quirked an eyebrow at her, but didn't comment. "So," she continued, looking at her own file. "Nearly fourteen thousand people in just over eight miles – not counting people coming in from Portland and the surrounding area."

"It's not impossible," Emily said.

"So, we either have a very inventive serial killer, or a concerned citizen with a flair for the dramatic," said Rossi.

"We need to find out which," said Hotch.

"And we need to do it fast," said Jordan.

Another series of pictures came up. A woman, late twenties, maybe – sprawled on a lawn chair in the middle of a (presumably her) back yard. She was wearing winter clothes, her scarf knotted viciously tight around her throat. A thin trickle of blood had leaked from the side of her mouth.

"Dawn Harper, twenty-seven, was found strangled outside the apartment she shared with two friends early yesterday morning."

"Manual strangulation or the scarf?" Grace double-checked, frowning at the woman's mortal remains.

"We'll have to wait on the autopsy," Jordan replied.

"And the model?" Rossi asked. "Any more morbid additions?"

"Same as before," Todd confirmed. "After the changes to the diorama were noted, Detective Marr had someone go to city hall and photograph every inch of it. This image was taken three days ago," she said, pointing to an empty model back yard resembling the crime scene photos. "This one," she continued, as a second image appeared beside the first, recreating the murder in disturbing detail. "Was taken yesterday afternoon."

There was a moment of contemplative silence as everyone peered at the tiny scene.

"Had the news broken by then?" Emily asked.

"Nothing specific," said Jordan. "I checked with all the local media outlets, and while they were reporting an incident as soon as they got wind of it, they didn't release any details until the evening."

"So, our enthusiast is either someone with access to privileged information," said Reid, thoughtfully.

"Or the information came direct from the source," Grace finished.

Emily shook her head, wondering if they even knew they were doing it. At least it boded well for office politics.

"We'll have to look into both possibilities until we can narrow it down," Morgan grumbled. "That's gonna be a lot of work, and this guy doesn't have much in the way of a cooling period."

"I may be able to help you there," said Todd. "Preliminary investigation at the scene did throw up one interesting piece of information that has not been revealed to the press." She winced. "The unsub cut out Dawn Harper's tongue."

As one, every agent's eyes slid to the thin trickle of blood on the model victim's face.

"Wheels up in thirty. And, uh –"

Everyone paused in their attempt to move out, curious.

"The Secret Santa. Nobody give Garcia any need to be annoyed with us," he said, looking deadly serious. "I put down the security on an apartment this morning."


	10. Eden Town

**Essential listening: Shangri-La, by The Kinks**

Derek lifted his coffee cup to his lips, running his eyes over the comparison shots between the diorama and the crime scenes. He had to hand it to whoever was doing this, they had picked a particularly weird way of showing their handiwork off to the world. Each tiny crime scene matched the shots of the real ones so precisely – and from every angle – that it was impossible to imagine someone who hadn't at least witnessed the murders having a creative input into their design.

While Hotch and Rossi were still arguing for keeping the 'concerned citizen' angle open for the time being, Derek couldn't help but disagree. There were too many inconsistencies.

"Okay, I can see someone suspectin' that brake lines were cut in the two car wrecks, _maybe_ , and our model builder makin' representations of those scenes to get people to look into them again," he argued. "And he mighta guessed that the ladder was sawn up before it collapsed on Ian Alvarez, but how did he know to replicate the exact positions of each cut?" he asked, holding up a comparison of the two ladders: the one from the real crime scene and the one from the diorama.

"That does rather stretch the bounds of credulity," Pearce remarked, from across the table.

They were in the jet, determinedly flying northeast. He, Reid, Pearce and Jordan were squeezed around the little table; Rossi, Hotch and Prentiss were perching on the bench and table opposite. Not for the first time, Morgan wondered whether their annual budget might stretch to making more of a space between the seats – particularly under the table. What Pearce regularly referred to as the leg-sandwich between her, Derek and the perennially gangly Reid was always a little trying, especially on journeys that lasted more than a couple of hours. Of course, ordinarily he might have quite enjoyed the opportunity to cosy up with Jordan Todd, but work was work, and he always tried to prevent his personal life intruding into it.

Besides, that kind of flirting demanded less of an audience.

"We've seen weirder," Reid reflected, and Derek's eyes flicked towards him.

He half expected the kid to shoot Pearce down – he'd had something of a habit of that, since Vegas, but all the anger seemed to have gone out of him. There was still a little resentment, as evidenced by the stiff upward quirk of his eyebrow, but it looked like Reid had finally decided to act a little more professionally around her, since he declined to comment further.

Curiously, they had taken the seats next to one another, which was suggestive of either mutual exhaustion or collusion – perhaps the change in behaviour had been precipitated by actual communication this time. He really hoped it had.

"True, but take Davina Bishop," said Pearce, gesturing at the picture of the model. "How could they possibly have known about the sub-dermal shoulder bruising before the exhumation? Not even coroner spotted that. Only the killer could have known exactly how she died."

"Unless someone has found a way to monitor their neighbours' every move," Rossi suggested.

"You know, I think I actually prefer the model-making psychopath theory to that one," said Pearce, after a moment. "It's marginally less creepy."

"This coming from the woman who lived in the country with the highest proportion per capita of CCTV in the world," Reid retorted, but as a shut-down it was half-hearted, and Pearce took it more gracefully than she could have.

"Aye, and most of it in London," she agreed, "but it's very different having Big Brother and your mates in operations on the other side of a screen than some strange soul who prefers to create intricate miniature crime scenes than just picking up the phone."

"Like something out of the Twilight Zone," said Prentiss.

"We get any forensics from the cars?" Hotch asked.

"Nothing outside the fact they were definitely cut," said Derek, consulting the file. "I mean, if we get a tool for comparison…"

"What up home-agents!" Everyone turned to the laptop on the table, which had turned itself on. "The office of enlightenment is open for business!"

"Hey Garcia," said Prentiss as Grace tipped the screen back to a more viewable angle. "What've you got?"

" _Not a whole lot,"_ she told them, deflating slightly. _"There's so much forensics on the model that it's moot," said Garcia. "It was a smorgasbord of prints and fibres."_

"How about specifically on the parts our unsub changed?" Rossi asked.

" _Some fibres, no full prints, nothing with DNA,"_ she responded. _"Covering his scientific tracks he is not. There's a couple of partials, but nothing definitive."_

"Did you run them through AFIS?" Prentiss asked.

" _Oh, my delightful, sweet Emily, that is so two hours ago,"_ Garcia confirmed _. "No hits."_

"City Hall's a government building, right?" said Reid, putting down his file. "There's gotta be some kind of surveillance there."

" _You would think!"_ Garcia told them. _"And there are some cameras, but not enough for full coverage."_

"So there's no CCTV in the lobby of City Hall?" Rossi asked.

" _There are two cameras, one aimed at the main doors and one covering the elevators."_

"And nothing on the model," Prentiss guessed.

" _Nada,"_ Garcia responded.

"It's hard to believe that nobody saw the unsub messing with the diorama," Reid reflected. "Particularly in such a public place."

"So, we know he's unobtrusive," said Grace. "Someone who fits in so completely that you don't notice him."

Reid nodded. "Almost invisible…"

"How about the scenes?" Hotch asked.

" _No more than was in the files, sorry."_

"Then what _have_ you got, Babygirl?

" _Apart from my fabulous good looks?"_

It drew a smirk from almost all of them.

"Garcia," Hotch warned, though there was a touch of humour in his voice.

Perhaps he was still thinking about her credit score threat.

" _I can tell you that the artist who built the diorama is in Amsterdam, Europe right now, and a quick trawl through his bank accounts tells me his hobbies aren't limited to model building,"_ said Garcia. _"He's also into exotic dancers, cafés and a muse named Mary Jane. Between that and the five corporate models he has created since this one, I don't think he would have had time for murder."_

"Well, he's also not local," said Prentiss. "If this guy is as organised as he seems, then he's probably stalking his victims."

"He'd have to in order to gain access," Derek remarked. "In the Davina Bishop case there's no forced entry, he coulda been watchin' her and found a way in."

"But all the other murders were outside," Jordan observed.

Hotch nodded. "So his preferred target is easily accessed, vulnerable."

"Davina Bishop was found in her pool, which was outdoors," Grace reminded them.

"But the access to her garden is limited," said Jordan. "High walls, electronic gates, the works."

"True."

"Yeah, and Ian Alverez's ladder was stored in a locked garage – so was Gretchen Ross's car," said Reid, consulting the file.

"So he's someone who can gain access," Rossi said. "Unobtrusive, someone with practical skills. A skilled worker, maybe?"

"A skilled worker who has this much time to spend on murder?" Prentiss countered.

Hotch pinched the bridge of his nose, breaking it up. "We're going around in circles." He sighed. "Okay, the last attack was two days ago, and from the interval between the previous crimes it's likely this guy – if it is a serial – has already chosen his next victim. We need to hit the ground running. Rossi, Morgan, I want you to head to the morgue, see if anything else was missed." They nodded, frowning down at their notes. "Reid, head to the Sheriff's office with Todd. The victimology's all over the place on this one, we might get more out of the geographic profile."

Reid nodded and licked his lips. "I'll need to factor in the topography – Mount Scott is a major local feature. If our unsub is local, it'll likely have an influence on his planning."

"Good. Todd – I want you to make a start on a board. Talk to the other detectives who worked these murders. There are a lot of disparate cases here, we need to bring them together."

"Yes sir."

"Prentiss, Pearce and I will head to City Hall." He glanced at Todd. "The Mayor wants to meet with us, yes?"

"Yes – I got the impression she's pretty freaked out," Todd told him. "She's eager to help us in any way she can."

"That could come in handy," Rossi observed.

"Alright," said Hotch. "I'll talk to her. Prentiss, Pearce – check out the lobby and the model. Make sure we've got all points of access covered – and that there aren't any new additions we don't know about."

He collected his files and moved away, Rossi following him.

"I'll give you some pointers on things to look out for with the detectives," Prentiss offered, and Jordan gladly accepted.

"Thanks," she said, and the two of them moved away to the far end of the jet.

Derek might have been more disappointed, he decided, if her absence hadn't relieved some of leg-room pressure. Gladly, he stretched out a leg, easing the cramp that was beginning to form there. Across from him, Reid also stretched out his foot and clicked it, obviously enjoying the opportunity to move more freely.

"This thing has all the hallmarks of a pulp thriller," Pearce reflected, as she, too, shifted to a more comfortable position. "Different M.O.s, seemingly random victims…"

"You got that right," said Morgan.

"Add into that a killer who memorialises his kills in miniature," Reid commented. "All it needs is a whiff of the paranormal and it wouldn't be out of place at 3 a.m. on the SyFy channel."

His eyes slid left towards Pearce when he spoke, and Derek raised an eyebrow. She was their resident occult expert, after all.

"Any precedent for dribbling candles?" he asked, half in jest.

Pearce shot him a smile, but shook her head. "Generally, like the rest of the creeps we spend our time stalking, your standard occultist will take a trophy and consider that to be the vessel for the essence of their victim." She pulled a face. "Body parts are a firm favourite."

" _Oh, ick! I knew there was a reason I should shut this feed down!"_ the computer exclaimed.

"Serves you right for eavesdroppin', Babygirl," Derek told her, amused, and then laughed as his favourite technician stuck her tongue out and disappeared.

"Well, there's obviously no trophies being taken here," said Reid, as the laptop turned itself off. "But I thought shrines were a big part of occult and pseudo-occult rituals – particularly those linked to murder."

He had half turned to Pearce while he spoke, making the generalisation seem more like a question, and while the motion looked oddly staged, as though he had had to consciously make himself do it, the kid was still making an effort to engage with her. Derek frowned: although there was a verbal agreement amongst the team not to profile one another, it was hard sometimes not to. Watching those two negotiate one another's behaviour as if they were complete strangers felt oddly painful.

In many ways, Reid and Pearce were soulmates – the same as he and Penelope were. There didn't need to be anything sexual between them for that to be true, for all the inappropriate banter that made the work day marginally less traumatic; they were simply a couple of life's natural conspirators, drawn together by the kindred spirit each recognised in the other.

The awkwardness that the team had carried with them from Vegas seemed duller now; not with forgiveness, that much was obvious, or they would be falling asleep on one another in the jet and arguing about zombies and Star Trek in the bar until the early hours. Maybe it had just been long enough for exhaustion to set in – sometimes you simply couldn't stay angry forever without consciously maintaining it.

And both of them had been total morons about the whole thing, he reflected, recalling the unusually physical argument they'd had in the back of the SUV in Orange County. Perhaps they had realised that.

 _Or maybe,_ thought that part of Derek that still had fifty bucks on them in the office pool (mostly because he had forgotten about it), _the kid was less than fond of the idea of Grace's new girlfriend, and had recognised the need to do something about it._

Derek shook his head. No. Reid wasn't the kind of guy who would try to break a couple up – especially a relationship that seemed to be making Pearce so happy. He had probably just decided to move on.

He frowned, wondering – not for the first time – exactly what the kid would actually be moving on from.

Pearce seemed to recognise the movement and the half-question, half-statement as an invitation, because she picked up her bottle of water and reflected for a moment. "While there have been many instances of the building of shrines and so on in many cultures, not just in terms of ritual and magic, I can't think of a single instance where the work has been this specific," she said thoughtfully. "Or this detailed."

Reid nodded, looking mildly relieved. He done his part; now he could relax. "Or this public," he added, earning himself a small smile that wouldn't have looked uncomfortable if Derek hadn't known Pearce so well.

She covered it well, though he suspected Reid had detected the undercurrent of discomfort, too, profiler that he was. They had always been close enough for the kid to read her tells, ever since she'd first shown her face in New Orleans, and vice versa, sometimes so well that it almost bordered on telepathy – at least, when they weren't snapping at each other. Reid's eyes flicked away, though Derek wasn't sure if this was because he didn't want to upset her, or because he didn't want to be upset himself.

The conversation could have ended there, caught on the awkward wall his two friends had carefully constructed between one another, but it seemed Pearce felt that she ought to contribute something, since he had.

"Mostly, your occult types are totally introverted and create their magic – and their murders – in private, or they're ridiculously flamboyant." Pearce said, which Derek supposed was agreement. She scratched her nose. "This doesn't feel like either. And there's no evidence of weirdness, really, aside from the model."

She fell silent, and Reid dropped his eyes back to the map in front of him, his ability to socialise apparently exhausted.

 _Both of them look tired_ , Derek thought, monitoring their micro-expressions. _Got so caught up in bein' angry with one another that they didn't realise how much energy it took – and now it's takin' its toll._

Even though they were sitting next to one another, their body language left no doubt that they were entirely separate entities. Sighing, he turned his attention to his own file, only looking up when Pearce spoke again.

"It's like this place was built for creepy," she said, with a grimace.

She was leaning over Reid's shoulder, obviously being very careful not to crowd him – keeping everything polite and distant, and above board. The kid licked his lips, possibly knocked a little off-kilter by her increased proximity. He shot her a glance out of the very corner of his eye.

"Um," he swallowed. "How so?"

"Well, just look at it," she said, poking the map. " _The Happy Valley Children's Park, Harmony Road_ …" She shook her head. "It's so overly normal sounding, like it's trying too hard – like something from a horror movie, like someone didn't realise how sinister naming things so blithely could be. It's crying out for a serial killer."

Derek chuckled, and so – following her finger as it travelled across the map – did Reid.

"Tch-yeah, I see your point," he said, and read out a few more. " _Sunnyside Recreation Centre, Gethsemane Pet Cemetery…"_

Derek smirked to himself as they each pointed out new and more amusing place names, almost laughing and smiling together.

Almost.

Still, even if it was a little pinched and awkward, it was good to see. Maybe working life would be a little easier around the BAU in the near future – and that could be no bad thing, after the last couple of months.

"Hey look – there's a Spencer Drive," said Pearce suddenly.

"Oh wow, a whole road named in my honour," Reid remarked sarcastically. "I'm flattered."

"You should go there and see if you can claim it," Pearce suggested.

Reid's mouth gave a more pleasant quirk, suggesting he was actually enjoying the banter. "Get a picture?"

"Yeah, you could use it as your Facebook profile."

As if on cue, they both chortled, met one another's gaze, and abruptly stopped smiling, applying themselves to their files with new determination, as if they had suddenly realised who they were talking with.

Derek shook his head.

 _Natural conspirators._

0o0

Dave surveyed the mortal remains of Dawn Harper philosophically.

She had been pretty, when she was alive, and even despite the day old decomposition, the bruising around her mouth and the evidence collection and cleaning, you could tell that she had taken care of herself.

"Cause of death?" he asked, as his colleague bent closer to get a better look at the injuries to her mouth.

"Asphyxia and venous congestion, due to strangulation," the coroner told him. "Ligature marks matched the scarf we found around her neck. No surprises there."

"The tongue?" Morgan asked, standing up.

The M. E. grimaced. "We haven't found that yet. I can tell you it was removed using something reasonably sharp, but not a knife. More likely some kind of shearing tool." The man paused and shook his head. "It took him a few goes to get it out."

"Inexperienced," Morgan reflected, as Dave huffed, trying not to imagine it. "Medical grade?"

"I would say not," said the M. E.. "There's evidence of tearing – you'd expect something intended for medical use to leave a cleaner cut. Also, there's evidence of wear and tear on the blade."

Morgan raised an eyebrow, his ears pricking up. "Anything you might be able to match?"

"Maybe," the man said, looking hopeful. "Bring us something and we'll see."

"He cut the tongue out post-mortem?" Dave asked.

"That's right – thank God. I mean," the M. E. qualified, "strangulation's a hard enough way to go without…"

He waved a hand, gesturing towards Dawn Harper's mouth. Dave assessed his expression. He was a younger man, not that much older than Harper, and the post-mortem behaviour was obviously getting to him.

"What have you got on the others?" he asked, gently steering the conversation away.

The M. E. took a deep breath and led them to the refrigerated wall of roll-out shelving. Dave guessed from his expression that he had never seen it this full before.

"Gretchen Ross," he said, patting one of the brushed chrome doors. "Massive internal injuries consistent with a driver involved in a high-speed vehicle collision – the steering column smashed up her internal organs pretty bad, and she sustained a couple of broken ribs, one of which punctured her lung, but it was the ruptured aorta that killed her. She bled out before the paramedics even got to her." He pushed a hand through his short black hair. "Honestly, if I didn't know her brake lines had been cut I woulda stuck with accidental death. Same with Andy Kirwan," he continued, moving to another anonymous door.

Dave guessed that there was simply no reason for him to show them their corpses. They were straightforward – they couldn't tell them anything more now.

"Massive traumatic brain injury," he said sadly. "Neither exhumation told us anything new – nor did Ian Alvarez's – he fell off a ladder, he hit his head, died of TBI. Now, there is something interesting with these two," he added, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the door that concealed Gretchen Ross. "Neither of their airbags deployed."

Dave's eyebrows moved upwards of their own accord as Morgan whistled. "What are the odds of that?"

"Reid could probably tell us," said the younger agent. "But the airbags failin' on _both_ cars after their brake lines were cut?" He shook his head. "There's got to be somethin' there."

The M. E. nodded. "The forensic vehicle specialists upstairs took both cars apart when we started noticing discrepancies," he said, which Dave translated as 'when we realised we had missed stuff'. "The airbag in Ross's car was faulty. She had an appointment to get it fixed with her garage the week after her death. Andy Kirwan's was not."

Morgan met Dave's eyes. "So, our guy got lucky with Gretchen Ross and tried to replicate it with Kirwan?" he proposed.

The M. E. nodded. "Evidence of tampering – and whoever did it obviously knew exactly what they were doing. Took out the deployment mechanism without damaging the airbag itself, and there was barely any evidence the casing around it had even been removed."

"Definitely someone with mechanical skill," Dave mused. "And obviously just at the beginning of their serial journey."

Morgan nodded. "Highly organised, but the M. O. doesn't always work out. He's tryin' new things, experimentin'."

"Davina Bishop is more complex," said the M. E. He actually pulled her out of the fridge. "This bruising wasn't here when I did the first autopsy." He sounded annoyed at himself. "I mean, sometimes bruising takes a while, particularly with drowning victims, but still. I shoulda kept her longer."

"You had no reason to suspect foul play," Dave reassured him.

"Yeah, but try telling yourself that," the M. E. grumbled. "Anyhow, after we dug her up and found these, we did a fresh tox' screen. The first one didn't pick anything up, but I wasn't taking any chances this time. We found traces of Zolpidem in her hair."

"Sleeping tablets."

"Yup." The M. E. nodded. "Didn't show up in the bodily fluid – typically it stays in the system for thirty-six hours, but Davina Bishop had pretty advanced type two diabetes, so she metabolised it differently. There was plenty of it in her hair, though."

 _Interesting,_ thought Dave. _Wanted to be up close and personal, but not with the chance of her fighting back._

"High dose?" he asked aloud.

"Enough to knock out a horse."

"So he had access to her drink," said Morgan. "Someone she let in?"

Dave nodded soberly. "Someone she trusted."


	11. Narrow Perspective

**Chapter 11 – Narrow Perspective**

 **Essential Listening: Dollhouse, by Melanie Martinez**

 **0o0**

Oregon was as beautiful as Grace remembered – though last time* they had been here it had been summer. This far north, winter was biting proper, and the houses and gardens of Clackamas County were buried under a deep blanket of snow. It looked like something out of a painting – the perfect imagining of a Christmastime community.

She frowned, watching skeletal, frost encrusted trees drift past the window. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, in that strange interim period between Gideon leaving and Rossi arriving. The team had been hunkering down then, ready to back one another up if they needed it. She and Reid had been closer then, and a sad smile crossed her lips as she remembered the first time they had gone out to the book fair together; she had had some impressive bruises from an encounter with a fire door, and he had been doing his mother hen routine. Back then, their relationship had been a gentle and uncomplicated thing – nothing more than friendship.

Grace pulled her scarf more tightly around her. She missed those days. Really, it was amazing what eighteen months could do to people.

That case had been the first time Hotch had started to trust her 'sight', too. He had called on her to use it a couple of times since, but they never talked about it if they could help it. She suspected he didn't really want to know, and she was gratified that he was prepared to trust her despite not knowing all there was to know about her more unusual talents – and despite them being far outside the bounds of what a sane person should accept as reality.

Really, it had been a long time since she had had to worry about anyone from the team trusting her – or worry about trusting them (silly, emotionally inarticulate arguments with a particular genius notwithstanding).

"I think the turning's up here," said Prentiss, from the front, bringing her back to the present.

She pulled herself together, glad that at least some of the decisions she had made the year before had turned out so well.

0o0

 _There is mirth at christenings and laughter at weddings, but no festival should be so merry as the death of a virtuous man._

 _Arthur Conan Doyle_

0o0

They pulled into the parking lot of the Happy Valley City Hall, minds on the case – and on the cold. It was easily ten degrees colder up here than it had been in Virginia, and though they had dressed accordingly, Aaron still felt the bite of it when he opened the door. Someone had cleared the paths and salted the parking lot, so at least the snow wasn't so deep around the car. Still, he was a little jealous of the higher ankled boots that both his female colleagues were wearing, keeping their feet above the snow-line.

He glanced down at Pearce's boots – which reached nearly to her knees – and realised, with some amusement that she was nonchalantly nudging the snow with her toe. There was an odd, happy little smile on her face; it struck him that out here, in a freezing cold parking lot, halfway up the side of a mountain, she looked happier and more relaxed than she had in several months, as if all the tension she had been carrying around with her since Vegas had finally lifted away.

Pearce grinned up at the cold, blue sky, exhaling a stream of cloudy breath into the air above her. For a moment the expression on her face was one of simple wonder, almost exactly the way Jack looked when he saw the first snow of the winter. Aaron shook his head.

"I have never seen an adult this excited about cold weather," he remarked, as Prentiss shivered.

Pearce shot him a furtive look, well and truly caught. "Oh, come on, give me this. Almost every case we've worked in the last month has been somewhere winter doesn't really happen," she told them. "Virginia is Christmassy enough, but this is…" She grinned, gesturing towards the mountains. "This is stunning. I'm just enjoying the moment."

Aaron chuckled and allowed his subordinates lead the way, bickering under their breath about the pros and cons of snow.

Pearce seemed a lot happier since she had met this 'Lily' person. As a rule, Aaron tried to avoid getting involved with the personal lives of his team, but he had found it was generally a good idea to keep abreast of them. All the gossip he'd overheard had been positive, so far, though he was almost one hundred percent sure that Lily wasn't Pearce's girlfriend's name.

She tended to keep things close to her chest, that one, but he couldn't fathom why she would change the name – unless someone on the team knew her, somehow, and she didn't want them to know who they were.

He shook his head, remembering the last time the team had been in Portland, when both Prentiss and Pearce had been pretty new. He had still been deciding how far he could trust either of them.

 _I made the right decision_ , he thought, recalling the way Prentiss had supported Todd when she had first taken over from JJ and the way Pearce had dealt with the spectre of revenants in Ohio (and an entirely different kind of spectre he would rather forget about), and mentally editing out the time Pearce had punched another agent in the face, or the mutinous expression Prentiss pulled when he told her she was up for annual review.

Aaron started up the steps behind them, thinking it was good knowing they – like the rest of the BAU – had the team's back. Their little family had weathered a lot in the last couple of years, and he couldn't have been prouder of any of them – even if he did want to lock one or two of them in a cupboard from time to time.

Happy Valley City Hall was rather pleasing, architecturally, consisting of several shallow-angled sloping roofs atop sturdy wood beams, both of which set off the chrome and glass of the entrance and lobby in a way that somehow created a natural meeting of modern and time-honoured materials. It had obviously been well designed, a fitting hub for the local community. As a whole, despite the snow, it was neat and well-tended, giving the impression that the people of Happy Valley were proud of it.

 _And our unsub is hitting right at the heart of it._

The lobby was busy – not bustling, just the everyday, average sort of busy that suggested the locals hadn't yet cottoned on to the possibility of there being a serial killer in their midst.

"Good afternoon," said the receptionist, as they flashed their badges. "Ah, Mayor Halliday is expecting you. I'll show you through."

"Thank you," said Aaron, using his eyes to signal that Pearce and Prentiss should stay behind for the moment and use the time to check out the diorama.

The receptionist led him upstairs and along a small maze of corridors to a room overlooking Mount Scott; the mayor's office was bright and airy, not ostentatious. There was a much-used desk, a table for larger meetings, and a more informal area with a couch and a coffee table. It boded well, Aaron felt.

As the receptionist showed him in, two women who had been talking together in the more informal part of the room got to their feet.

"Madam Mayor?" he asked, extending a hand as one of the women nodded, giving him an appraising look. "SSA Aaron Hotchner."

"Alison Halliday," said the taller woman, shaking his hand. "This is Detective Leah Marr."

The second woman, more compact than the first, shook his hand. He got the impression that she was assessing him just as much as he was assessing them.

"Detective."

"We sure are glad you folks could come out," said Mayor Halliday, gesturing towards a seat. "This whole thing is… well, it's unsettling."

"The whole department's on edge," Detective Marr added. "We've managed to keep it out of the press and the public eye for the moment, but it's only a matter of time before someone starts putting things together. Particularly as the perp seems to be getting bolder."

Aaron nodded. "This kind of unsub generally contacts the press," he told them. "They feel the need for recognition. Managing the press may become an important part of this investigation."

The two women exchanged a speaking look.

"I can have a word with them," said the Mayor.

"I'd appreciate that," said Aaron. "But go gently – our media liaison, Agent Todd, can advise you. She's at the station, presently."

"Good, I'd like that," Mayor Halliday replied, looking mildly relieved.

"See, I told you they'd know what to do," said the Detective, nudging the mayor's arm.

Aaron guessed they had been friends for a long time.

"Forgive me," said the mayor, with a tired smile. "It's not that I didn't want you guys out here, it's just that this whole thing is a little outside my area of expertise." She gave a hollow chuckle. "I thought the most I'd have to deal with in my term would be disputes over fishing rights and contentious carnival floats."

"You're doing fine, Alison," Detective Marr told her. "This is the kind of thing that throws everyone for a loop – that's what their department are _for_." She nodded in Aaron's direction. "I attended a seminar at the Portland Field Office last year," she told him, answering his unasked question. "Run by Agent Bill Calvert. He told us how helpful you were with that guy who was scaring people to death on his patch. As soon as we confirmed Davina Bishop's death was no accident, I thought of the BAU."

Aaron nodded. "I remember Calvert," he said, with a genuine smile – though he was actually recalling Reid and Morgan's encounter with an argumentative elevator as he said it. "He's a good agent." Pleasantries concluded, he surveyed the detective for a moment. "You handled Davina Bishop's case?" he said gently, and watched as a dark cloud passed over her features for a moment.

"Yes," she said heavily. "I can't believe I missed the sleeping tablets."

"There was no sign of a break in?"

"None. Nothing that suggested anything other than a single woman having a drink in the evening. There wasn't even a second glass – you'd think she'd have offered him a drink if she let him in."

Aaron nodded. "Which tells us that either she didn't know he was there, she felt comfortable with him being around, but didn't consider him an equal, or that she did consider him an equal and offer him a drink, but he washed up the glass. Don't beat yourself up about it. This unsub takes particular care not to leave traces behind anywhere except the model – and he obviously plans each crime meticulously."

Detective Marr grimaced, but nodded. "All I care about is catching the s-o-b."

"Agreed," said Mayor Halliday. "I have a responsibility to this town, and I don't like the idea of someone hunting people down in it. Anything you or your team needs, Agent Hotchner – you just let me know."

0o0

Grace loosened her scarf a little.

Whoever was in charge of the thermostat in City Hall knew what they were doing – it was unusually well balanced; cool enough to be comfortable without being stifling, warm enough to bring the feeling back to your bones after being out in the north western chill.

She leaned down to get a closer look at the diorama. It was an impressive model, taking up much of the main lobby and comprising a great deal of Clackamas County. The detail was extraordinary. She could see, from where she was standing, the City Hall, outside which each tiny rock and shrub had been perfectly recreated.

It was, perhaps, fortunate, that the model had been created in summer, and none of the Christmas cheer she had spotted about the town and in the foyer of the City Hall had been replicated on the model. Grace wasn't sure she could cope if someone started using the accoutrements of the season in their murder kit. You shouldn't giggle at a crime scene, but she felt that anything involving a candy cane stabbing might send her over the edge.

"I can see why an unsub might want to use the model to display their kills," Emily mused, calling her mind back to more sensible things. "It's right at the heart of this place."

Grace 'hmmed' her assent. "Not easy to access unnoticed," she observed, straightening up. "The reception desk has a good line of sight, and this is clearly a high-traffic area."

They both looked over at the security guard lurking by the wall. There was another, less obtrusive gentleman sitting in the reception area, too, patiently reading a book – though he turned the pages occasionally, his eyes weren't moving across the page. Instead, he was covertly observing the room.

 _Clever,_ thought Grace. _A double blind. Someone from outside this building – or without surveillance training – would never spot it. If our guy does, then so much the better for the profile._

"And if he doesn't, we should have him," she murmured aloud.

"Pardon?" Emily asked, and Grace shook her head. She hadn't intended to speak aloud. "Just mumbling to myself," she admitted. "There can't be many people around here with the skills to replicate that level of detail on a model," she suggested. "Perhaps we should have Garcia look into local clubs or shops."

"Good idea," said Emily. She looked as though she were about to add something more, but then her expression changed to one of open politeness. "Hi," she said.

Grace turned to find a couple of office workers looking sheepishly at the two agents.

"Good afternoon," said the first, a middle aged woman in a cardigan and a neat two-piece. "I'm sorry to bother you, but –" She glanced at the younger man beside her, who nodded. "But Sam and I were wondering whether you were the FBI?"

"We are," said Emily and introduced them both.

"I'm Lara Stone, and this is Sam Edwards," said the woman. "We're in charge of public outreach – that is, community morale – I mean –"

"The diorama was our idea," Sam explained, coming to his colleague's rescue; she shot him a grateful look.

Grace nodded; given what was going on she could well understand why Mrs Stone might be a little flustered.

"We were wondering – might it be a good idea to 'retire' the model for a little while?" Mrs Stone suggested. "For maintenance, or something – just until you've got this guy?"

"No," said Grace, and the two civil servants turned to her, both frowning deeply. "Right now, there's a chance this unsub doesn't know about us – and if we take away his podium, it's unlikely he would stop killing."

Emily nodded. "He would probably look for another means for recognition."

"Like what?" Mr Edwards asked, looking pale.

"Well, he wants to be remembered," said Grace, "so something no one would ever forget."

"But it's at the heart of our community," Mrs Stone complained, sadly.

"Lara, I get the feeling we shouldn't encourage this guy to up his game," said Edwards, reading between the lines.

"No," said Emily. "Look, we understand how difficult this must be for you guys, particularly since the diorama was your project, but right now the best way for you to help us catch this guy is to leave the model alone and see what he does next."

"Alright," said Mrs Stone, though she was plainly far from happy. "Is there anything else we can do?"

Emily exchanged a look with Grace. "Yes, actually," she said. "How was the project commissioned?"

"We had a contest," Mrs Stone replied at once. "Twenty artists were shortlisted from around eighty applicants. We narrowed it down further to five, then Mayor Halliday picked from those."

"It was pretty intense," said Mr Edwards, with a smile. "And a lot of fun looking through the portfolios people submitted."

"Do you still have copies of those?" Emily asked.

"Yes, somewhere," he said, and then frowned. "Why?"

"Because someone who is very good at modelling is murdering people," Mrs Stone realised, and put a hand over her mouth. "Oh God, what if it's one of them?"

"Were any of the twenty modellers local?" Grace asked.

"A few," the woman nodded. "There's a society – they mostly do railway models and the like, but I think they all entered."

"But not all of them made the shortlist?" Grace checked.

"No…"

"Do you have their details?"

"We could get them for you," said Mr Edwards, immediately. "It'll take a little while –"

Grace pulled out her card and scribbled on the back of it. "That's our technical analyst's email address," she told him. "She's best placed to start crossing people off the list. If you think of anything else, don't hesitate to call."

"Thank you," said Mr Edwards. "It's good to be able to do something to help."

"Yes," Mrs Stone agreed. "We'll get the information to you as soon as we can."

When they had gone, Emily turned to Grace and added, "We should check them out, too."

"Responsible for the model, local, familiar with City Hall, eager to insert themselves into the investigation – I should say so," Grace agreed. "If nothing else, we can rule them out and bump them back down to 'concerned citizen' status."

"Yeah."

"Hey boss," said Grace, as Hotch joined them. "Get much?"

"Anything we need," he said, and both women raised their eyebrows.

They really were freaked out, here.

"Detective Marr is marshalling her department and Mayor Halliday is going to liaise with Todd and talk to press," he told them. "You?"

They told him about Stone and Edwards, and the information they were rustling up.

"Good," he said. "Then we'd better get to the station, see if the others have anything."

Grace couldn't help but grin as she turned and walked outside, trotting down the steps into the packed snow.

 _Good news, British lady – it's actually cold here,_ she thought, in a voice uncannily reminiscent of Garcia's.

In fact, it was insanely cold, and as Hotch had rightly pointed out as they'd pulled into the car park, Grace couldn't get enough of it. There was snow, there was slush, there was ice, there was a vicious wind from along the valley – it just felt _right_.

"This is making me a little homesick," she admitted, as they reached the SUV.

"You, my friend, have problems," Emily laughed.

0o0

Jordan pinned another photo of another pale, staring corpse to the board she and Reid had been assembling, feeling oddly philosophical. When she had started working with the BAU, some of the autopsy and crime scene photos had made her shudder. These days, they made her a little sad, but mostly she took them in her stride, as the other members of the team seemed to.

It was a thankless sort of operation, trying to stem the relentless flow of murderers and rapists, helplessly watching the bodies stack up. As soon as they tracked one down, five more seemed to spring up in their place – and while saving each individual they could made the late nights and the nightmares and the constant moving around worth it, it didn't quiet the horror of losing the ones they didn't reach in time.

The BAU was very different to Counter Terrorism. There, the fear had been distant and diffuse, and the people your actions saved or killed might have been on something of a grander scale, but generally you never met them. As much as she'd enjoyed working with this team, there was a part of her that would be delighted to go back to her 'normal' job when SSA Jareau came back off maternity leave in a few months' time.

She glanced back at Doctor Reid, who was busy applying himself to the stack of files in front of him, absorbing information at an extraordinary rate.

"It's weird how he only leaves trace on the model, not at the crime scenes," the young genius remarked.

"Something about this isn't weird?" Jordan asked, glancing at the tiny model of Dawn Harper, sprawled in her lawn chair.

Reid raised an eyebrow, which she took to be agreement.

"He's obviously trying to send us a message," she suggested.

"Yeah, but what?" Reid wondered. "Look at what I can do? Look at what the people in this town are doing? Look at what the police have missed?" He frowned. "Catch me if you can?"

"Do you think it's a taunt or a cry for help?" she asked. "The unsub seems very precise about what he does or doesn't show us."

"Hard to say, at this point," Reid told her, pulling a face. "I mean, if the models were getting into the press, then I would have said they were taunts – but the possibility can't be ruled out. It could be an expression of remorse, but there's no other evidence of that in the profile. Really, we need more information."

"You mean we need another body," said Jordan, with a touch of resignation.

Doctor Reid looked up, a touch of sadness around his eyes. "Maybe." He picked up the autopsy report for Dawn Harper. "He is taking care to distance himself from the attacks," he reflected.

"I thought strangulation was a pretty up close and personal method of execution," Jordan remarked, joining him at the table.

He seemed more relaxed today, than he had been in a long time – since she'd joined the team in fact. She might not have been with the team for very long, and she might not be a profiler, but she wasn't a fool. There was obviously some kind of rift between the doctor and Agent Pearce; she could hardly have failed to notice the tension between them, or that it was fading now. He had been very supportive since Jordan had arrived, when he wasn't simply glaring at things because a particular British agent was in the vicinity. It was pleasant to find him in a tutoring mood.

"Well yes – I mean, it is – but he used a ligature, from behind," Reid said. "What does that tell us?"

She thought about it. "That… he didn't want to see her face when he killed her?"

"Exactly. Gretchen Ross and Andy Kirwan were killed by interfering with their cars," he reminded her.

"So, he didn't want to be anywhere near them when they died," Jordan realised. "Same with Ian Alvarez."

Reid nodded encouragingly.

"And Davina Bishop?" she asked. "He held her under the water, face to face."

"Morgan called," he informed her. "The M.E. found Zolpidem in her hair."

"He drugged her," she realised. "So he got to be close, but he didn't have to see her expression. He's evolving, experimenting. That's why he took the tongue now, but didn't do anything like that before."

"Maybe, yeah – but he's taking care not to give them a chance to fight back," said Reid. "What does that tell us?"

"He's physically compromised in some way," Todd suggested, following his train of thought. "He's smaller or weaker – he can't control them any other way."

"Exactly."

Jordan nodded, looking hard at the picture of Dawn Harper from before her murder. Maybe they could do this without another body.

"The tongue though," Reid mused. "He's gotta be trying to send us a message." He frowned. "But what?"

0o0

*See Moments of Grace – Season Three, Act One: The Road Less Travelled

0o0

 **So, part of the reason I've been so busy is that I have a book out. I don't entirely approve of using this place as a plug, but what the hell – Garcia would ;) If you're interested, have a hunt for The Fox and the Fool by Lauren K. Nixon.**

 **Thank you all so much for your patience – I've needed these last couple of weeks off. I feel so much less exhausted (though I'm still months behind, hah!).**

 **Parlanchina xx**


	12. Little Boxes

**Essential listening: Little Boxes, by Pete Seeger**

 **0o0**

"I'm sorry to have to put you through this, Mrs Alvarez, particularly at such a difficult time, but we just have a few more questions."

Aaron watched Rosa Alvarez's face closely as he spoke; she was obviously grief-stricken and exhausted, and this new trauma, having to go through the details of her husband's death all over again – even having to have him exhumed – was an additional strain she obviously didn't need.

"I can't stay long," she said, shortly. "I have to pick up my kids from my Dad's."

"I understand, ma'am," he told her. "I'll try to keep this brief."

He directed her to a chair, which she restlessly settled into, half an eye on the time.

"I don't really understand what more I can tell you," she told him. "Ian was fixing the siding on the house – I'd been asking him for months – and his ladder collapsed under him. I heard him shout as he – as he went down, and I called the ambulance." She swallowed hard, clearly recalling the frantic minutes she had spent with her husband on their drive – and the longer, awful minutes beside his hospital bed while he slipped further away from her. "We thought it was a horrible accident – and now Detective Marr thinks it's not? I just don't see how that's possible, Agent Hotchner. I'm sorry, I just – I just don't."

"We had forensics take a look at the ladder," he told her gently, and pulled out the close up they had provided of the saw marks. "Someone sawed almost all the way through it."

He pushed the photograph towards her and Rosa Alvarez picked it up, staring at it with wide, horrified eyes. She was silent for a few moments, though her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. Eventually, she put the picture down on the table with deliberate care, and looked up at Aaron.

"What do you need to know?" she said, in a hoarse voice.

"Does anyone outside your house have access to the garage where the ladder was stored?" he asked, carefully.

She shook her head. "No, it's locked."

"Is there an alarm?"

"No – well, yes, on the main house – but our garage is separate."

He nodded. "Okay. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband?"

Her eyes fell back to the saw marks. "No," she said. "Not to kill him – I mean, we get on pretty well with our neighbours, but there are always one or two you don't always get along with. But I can't imagine any of them doing this…" She touched the edge of the photograph as if trying to understand. "And there's no way this could be a mistake?"

Aaron shook his head, the note of desperation in her voice making him frown a little. "No, I'm afraid not. Any recent disagreements at work?"

"No. My husband and I are quiet people, Agent Hotchner." He watched her catch herself and swallow painfully. " _Were_ quiet people. We go to church, we work hard, we try to raise our kids right… I can't imagine anyone –" She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry."

"Take your time," said Aaron.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I can't imagine anyone wanting to kill him."

0o0

"How's it goin'?"

Spencer tore his eyes from the map he'd been peering at for a good hour and turned to find Morgan leaning against the desk beside him. He looked around, surprised; he hadn't even heard his friend come in.

"Uh, okay," he said, and nodded in thanks as Morgan handed him a coffee. "Caffeine will help."

Morgan snorted. "That good?"

"Tch-yeah, well, taking Mount Scott into account is kinda throwing in a curveball," he admitted. "I got Detective Marr to fill me in on local rat runs, though, so that helps."

"He got a comfort zone?"

Spencer winced. "Yeah, and it's pretty broad. I can't see a particular area he's avoiding, so we can't pin down where he likely lives."

"So he might be comin' in from outside?" Morgan asked, with a frown.

Spencer shook his head. "No. The level of local knowledge he displays is too great. He has to spend all or most of his time within this region of Clackamas County." He pointed at the green circle he'd drawn around Happy Valley and Harmony Point.

"Not much help, huh?" Morgan reflected.

"No." Spencer sighed. "At least we can exclude outsiders."

"We kinda knew that from the diorama."

The two men turned to find Prentiss and Pearce pulling their winter coats off. Spencer sent Emily, who had spoken, a mock glare.

"How were the modellers?" he asked.

"Odd," said Pearce, after a moment's thought. "And weirdly excited that someone's using the diorama as a morbid noticeboard. But I can't see them doing something like this. Most of them are pretty steady, nice people – unless they're all working together because none of them won the contract."

"And that would be pretty out there, even by BAU standards," Prentiss agreed. "Ooh, is there coffee?" she added, spotting their cups.

"Over in the waitin' area," Morgan pointed. "Can't vouch for the tea, though."

Pearce laughed. "I'll live. Besides, this is hot chocolate weather."

Spencer glanced at her as she turned and followed Prentiss, remembering another occasion when it had been 'hot chocolate weather', when they had whiled away the small hours together and he had woken up with his nose pressed into the nape of a familiar neck*. He frowned, running his eyes over the board. Suddenly the coffee in his hand tasted unexpectedly bitter.

He felt a gentle nudge to his elbow (mercifully the one not holding scalding liquid, because – knowing him – that would have ended badly) and glanced at Morgan, who was giving him a long, low look that in Spencer's experience meant trouble.

"Hey, you okay?" his friend asked, and Spencer's frown deepened.

Of course he was okay. What did Morgan take him for?

"I – yeah, I'm fine." He gave his friend a slightly baffled look. "Are you?"

"Nah, I mean – are you and -" he glanced over Spencer's shoulder, towards the waiting area, "- Pearce okay?"

The question knocked him for six. The others had been maintaining a sort of unofficial wall of silence about the dissolution of their friendship, and he had been expecting it to stay that way. Startled, Spencer straightened up, feeling oddly panicked, and cast around for something – anything – else to talk about.

"I – it's – so, the Zolpidem in Davina Bishop's hair," he stuttered. "How d'you think he got it in her system?"

He backed up a couple of paces, his eyes fixed to the corner of the board, hoping Morgan would take the hint and let it go.

He did not.

"C'mon man," he said quietly, watching his friend with an oddly sad expression on his face. "You gotta talk about it some time."

"No, I don't," said Spencer, immediately. "I mean, I don't even – there – there's nothing to talk about."

"Uh-huh," said Morgan, who did not look convinced. "Is that the same kind of nothin' that sends you scurryin' out of a room when her new girlfriend comes up in conversation?"

Spencer's eyes snapped to his friend's face. Surely, he hadn't been that obvious? But Morgan was still levelling that low, slightly cryptic look in his direction. Spencer licked his lips.

"Morgan, that's – there's…" He made an effort to calm down and centre himself, aware that all his emotions were probably written all over his face. "There was never anything between us," he lied, and wished as hard as he might that he could live in a simpler world, where that was true and they could just be friends. "Her personal life is none of my business." Morgan looked like he was going to say something else, so Spencer cut him off. "And mine is none of yours, man."

Derek stared at him for a few more seconds and then turned back to the board with a light shrug. "Yeah, well. At least you're talkin' again," he reflected.

Spencer swallowed, conceded Morgan had a point about that, at least, and settled back down beside him.

"You know, if you ever want to talk about it, you know where I am," the older agent murmured.

He rolled his eyes. His friend meant well, but right now… "I know," he said stubbornly. "But I really don't have anything to say."

 _And if I did, I probably wouldn't say it to a profiler,_ he thought. _Even one that's my best friend._

"She had alcohol in her system," said Morgan, and Spencer frowned in his direction, confused. "Davina Bishop," he reminded him.

 _Oh, right. The case…_

"So he drank with her," Spencer mused. "Which suggests he's reasonably personable."

"Not necessarily," said Morgan. "The M.E. also said her liver was in a bad way. Coulda just been drinkin'."

"But there was no evidence of forced entry," Spencer recalled, mentally turning the pages of the crime scene report. "So she must have let him in, in order for him to spike her drink."

"I think this guy is pretty invisible," said Pearce, joining them. "I mean, if he can kill six people in a busy part of suburbia without anyone noticing, then he's got to be fairly unobtrusive."

She leaned on the table next to Spencer, the way she always used to, without agenda or thought, and he felt his pulse jump. He tightened his fingers around the coffee cup, mentally berating himself to get a grip.

"Plus, if he's using the diorama as a sort of public scrapbook – for recognition, rather than as a taunt – then it's likely he lacks recognition in his day-to-day life."

Morgan nodded. "The victimology's all over the place, too. Age, gender, socio-economic class, race…"

"There's gotta be something that links them." Spencer huffed.

Pearce made a 'hmm' noise, which he supposed meant she agreed. There was a contemplative silence for a few minutes, until Hotch appeared, delivering Mrs Alvarez to Jordan Todd.

"Get anything?" Pearce asked, when the two women had gone.

Hotch sighed. "She genuinely believed it was an accident, that much is clear," he commented, and three pairs of eyes narrowed at his choice of words.

' _That' was clear, so…_

"What wasn't?" Pearce asked, taking the words right out of Spencer's brain in that disconcerting way she did sometimes. He glanced in her direction.

"I don't know," said Hotch, with a deeper frown than usual. "She was definitely holding something back. She did mention that her husband was having a little tension with some of the neighbours."

"That might be worth lookin' into," Morgan proposed, pushing off the table they were all leaning against. "None of the other older victims' families could think of anyone who'd had trouble with them."

"Prentiss and Rossi are in with Dawn Harpers housemates now," said Pearce.

"I'll talk to Detective Marr about settin' up some interviews with Ian Alvarez's neighbours," Morgan announced.

"Good." Hotch nodded. "I'll get Garcia to track down model making suppliers. If the unsub isn't a part of the modelling club, then he's got to have access to the materials some other way."

"Better have her check the backgrounds of anyone in the club too, just in case."

They departed at speed, leaving Spencer alone with Pearce, which was apt to make him distinctly uncomfortable these days.

He risked a glance in her direction: she seemed entirely focused on the board.

 _How does she do it?_ he wondered, frowning into his coffee cup.

She made it look so easy, concentrating on the job at hand, rather than on the fortifications they had put up between them. He was in turmoil just leaning on a table next to her, fighting the twinned desires to either scowl at her and storm away for having such an obviously successful relationship with someone else – or to just drop his hand over hers and pull her into a dark corridor somewhere, and hope she didn't decide to punch him again before he could kiss her. And there she was, sipping her hot chocolate, cool as a cucumber sandwich.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge such unhelpful thoughts. Of course, he'd never actually do that; he had far too much respect for her (he admitted grudgingly), but as a fantasy it was pretty irresistible. Spencer bit his lip, trying not to get too caught up in the way his heart raced at the thought of holding her, or the way her hair would smell if he buried his face in it.

He had to remind himself how angry she'd made him in Vegas, sticking her nose into his business. His life. And that punch...

Annoyed, he pushed down that part of his psyche that wished to lodge a complaint at the way he'd been acting at the time.

 _God_ , he thought. _How does anyone get through a day feeling this pissed off and this… this much of a fool all the damn time?_

"It's interesting," she said, wrenching him gratefully out of his thoughts.

He cleared his throat and tried to drown his musings with caffeine. "What is?"

"The comfort zone you've marked out," she said, pointing up at the circle on the board.

"What about it?"

"It's exactly the same area as the diorama," she explained. "Well, almost – the diorama's a massive rectangle, not a circle, so there's a chunk of Mount Scott on the model that isn't in the zone."

Spencer frowned. "Well, we know he's highly organised, so it's unlikely that that's an accident."

"Mmm," Pearce agreed.

He met her gaze. "You think he could be mission-based?" he wondered, aloud.

"We don't have any evidence of that," she said, cautiously.

"No, but think about it," he encouraged, warming to his theme. "It would explain the interaction with the diorama – and the wide range of victim types. And the way he seems so intent on sending someone a message."

"Yeah, but what – and to whom?" she countered. "To us? To the local council?"

"To the people of Clackamas County?" Spencer suggested.

Pearce crossed her arms, frowning at the board. "Saying what, do you reckon? I mean, if he's a house cleaner, he's hardly picking the dregs of society to prey upon," she argued. "A teacher – a bus driver? I don't know, Reid…"

Something about the way she was standing and the tone of voice hit him right in the chest. How long had it been since they'd thrown a case back and forth like this? Argued sensibly, academically, like adults – like friends?

Suddenly, he found that he couldn't quite look at her.

"Do you have the extent of the diorama?" he asked, clearing his throat.

She nodded, and started rummaging through the pile of files on the desk. "Yeah… You want me to read it off while you mark it up?"

The tilt to her head was painfully familiar, too, and it made his throat constrict for a moment.

 _No,_ he told himself. _You have to get through this. You have to be able to work with her._

"Yeah, that would help, thanks," he got out, somehow managing to keep his voice light – normal.

He never had been very good at lying.

 _Except to yourself_.

 _Maybe she just never felt the same way I did_ , he thought, and had to push down the bitterness that thought brought with it. _So it's easy for her because she was always indifferent. How many times did she say workplace romance was a bad idea?_

She brushed past him on her when she set her mug down and he was reaching for a marker; she smelled of hot chocolate and bergamot, and he was certain it was going to drive him crazy.

 _Grace was right about workplace romances_ , he thought, furiously. _Nothing good ever came of them._

0o0

*See Moments of Grace - Season Four, Act One: Before I Sleep.


	13. Devils in the Details

**Essential listening: Our Neighbourhood, by Spaced**

 **0o0**

Aaron dialled Garcia's number, skim-reading an autopsy report as he did so. He was taking the opportunity to absorb some coffee while the rest of the team brought together what they could from the original case files and talked to Dawn Harper's rather shaken housemates.

" _Penelope Garcia, centre for all the world's knowledge, how can I be of service this fine winter evening?"_

Aaron smiled. He was aware that other members of the bureau might well frown upon the latitude he afforded some of the members of his team, but generally he had found they worked best that way. And there really was nothing that could recharge your brain in a case that looked like it was going nowhere than speaking to a mad ex-hacker with a serious caffeine addiction.

"It's Hotch," he told her, before her usual exuberance got her into trouble.

" _My liege!"_ she exclaimed, and he wondered whether he ought to call Anderson and have him swap out the coffee in the office for decaf.

All the same, he couldn't quite stop the corner of his mouth turning up. "What have you?"

" _Corrigan Bale, the guy who made the diorama in the first place, finally called me back,"_ Garcia announced.

"Go on," said Aaron, raising an eyebrow. There was something about Garcia's tone that suggested this was one phone call she had not enjoyed.

" _He was unhappy that some 'unskilled amateur' – his words – was trampling all over his perfect model,"_ she said, with obvious distaste. _"He confirmed his alibi, gave me a list of his suppliers and arranged access to his studio to the north of Portland, which was nice of him. I'd say the unsub pissed him off quite a bit. Artistic differences. Whatever. He brightened up quite considerably when he realised the extra publicity he might get as a result of the murders could boost his career,"_ she continued sourly.

"Well, murder sells," Aaron pointed out, though he shared the sentiment that it shouldn't with his technical analyst.

" _People creep me out."_

"Not all of us, I hope."

" _No, there are exceptions to the rules, and most of those exceptions are on this team."_

"Glad to hear it," said Aaron, flicking through the report.

" _Also, I got the four-one-one on the local model making supply shops in Clackamas County – and believe me, there are more of those than I had expected. It's like every man and his Chihuahua builds tiny tableaus in Portland."_

Garcia paused, and Aaron took advantage of the momentary break in his technical analyst's train of thought to bring her back to the task in hand. "And?"

" _And…"_ She stopped for a moment and Aaron imagined her pulling a face. _"Setting aside the fact the modelling community does a lot of swapping, trading and buying that just won't leave a trial we can follow, it's hard to say what might be legit and what might be our Miniature Murderer,"_ she complained, and Aaron thanked God the press hadn't gone public with the case yet, or the 'miniature murderer' would already be being used as an irritating moniker. _"I mean, most of what our creep of the month used for his crime scenes is pretty generic. He's adapted standard materials using cutting tools and paints that are specialist, but common in the model making world. So, until we have some names I can cross-check with, this list of buyers on its own is going to give us nada."_

Aaron sighed. "Alright. Start looking into the victims' bank details for the weeks leading up to their deathsn– see if there's anywhere they intersect."

" _Which will give us somewhere they might have crossed paths with Mr Miniature, gotcha. Garcia out!"_

0o0

Given that their unsub was using the diorama as both a physical and conceptual 'map' for his crimes, she and Reid had decided to pull out another board beside the actual map of Clackamas County and stick up grid-by-grid photos of the expansive local centrepiece, marking the miniature scenes with a drawing pin and red string the same way they had the standard chart, complete with little clusters of pictures of the tiny, intricate crime scenes.

Standing back to assess their work, Grace couldn't help imagine they had been transported inside some kind of sinister children's programme. It had lodged a weird combination of Pete Seeger's _Little Boxes_ and the introductory music and script for the 1960s British stop-motion kids' show, _Trumpton_ , in her brain, and while the result was fascinating, it was beginning to give her a bit of a headache.

She glanced at Reid, who was perching on the table beside her as they both ran practiced eyes over the murder boards. He seemed perfectly engrossed in the information in front of him, but Grace knew him better than that. He was uncomfortable and distracted, though he was covering it pretty well. They had both been making a protracted effort to try to bring their working relationship to somewhere resembling professionalism, and it was hard work. Harder work than it should be.

 _Never should have let myself get mixed up in workplace romance again,_ she grumbled to herself. _I knew what would happen, and I did it anyway._

Still, their attempts at civility had been improving, and the lack of open hostilities was refreshing, even if having to put up this kind of a pantomime with someone she had once been so close with was painful and trying. They had worked together most of the afternoon, as the winter sun set on Clackamas County and a fierce, bitter wind picked up from the river to the north.

Between them, they had finished collating the information from the previous murders, drawn up new information on the most recent addition to the macabre display in the town hall, and speculated on the background an unsub with this level of precision and meticulousness might have. The dichotomy between the pristine real-life crime scenes and the extremely detailed, but forensically sloppy, crime scene models was interesting.

It was almost like remorse.

"You know what these remind me of?" said Reid, stirring her from her speculations. "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death."

Grace nodded slowly, but Reid did not appear to have noticed, since he continued.

"They were created in the 1940s by Chicago born heiress and forensic pioneer, Frances Glessner Lee," he recited. "She set up the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine, the George Burgess Magrath Library – in honour of her friend, lobbied the government to overhaul the outdated and wildly unreliable coroner system… That's how we got Medical Examiners," he added, going off on a brief detour. "Before that, it was just people in the community with little or no medical experience deciding how someone had died. Anyhow, another of Glessner Lee's Projects was the Harvard Associates in Police Science."

Grace nodded again, looking back at the board. She knew about Glessner Lee and her famous forensic models, but Reid was in mid-flow by now, and she didn't feel like interrupting. Explaining obscure knowledge was one of his greatest pleasures – and one of the few times he seemed completely at ease, conversationally speaking. It wouldn't do the polite working rapport they were repairing any good to putt him off just now.

Besides, she had kind of missed it.

"She knew that most police officers rarely looked outside their own districts to solve crimes, and very few had any sort of forensic knowledge, so the Harvard Associates in Police Science was aimed at remedying that," Reid went on. "She brought groups of detectives together for week long seminars where they underwent team building exercises and were encouraged to form lifelong friendships, which meant that when they found a case going cold they had someone else to turn to. They were trained to think analytically, and not to overlook anything at a crime scene, and to do that, Glessner Lee created the Nutshells."

"Yes," said Grace, deciding this was a politic point to join in. "I seem to recall that making miniatures was a popular hobby among the middle classes back then – and quite a suitable occupation for a young lady of Glessner Lee's standing when she was growing up."

Education, she recalled, had not been, though Glessner Lee had obviously always been in possession of a fine analytical mind and the desire to learn.

 _It was a different world,_ she reminded herself, as Reid turned to look at her.

"You've heard of her?" he asked, nonplussed.

"Yes, she's one of my heroes," she told him, offering a small smile. "Did more for forensic Science in her sixties than most people manage in a lifetime."

"Oh," he said, and looked faintly disappointed.

Grace chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment. She shouldn't leave it there – it would feel like she'd shut him down, though that hadn't been her intention at all.

It was hard work, getting through the working day like this, but Grace had long since mastered the art of managing her micro-expressions, and she was confident that the majority of her discomfort was masked, even from Reid, who knew – or, at least, had known – her better than most. She had walked through hell with and in front of her old team, and if putting on a front that looked like nothing about this conversation felt awkward would help Reid, then she would keep it up for as long as she could.

"I love the Nutshells," she said, trying to get him to reengage. "Hell of a way to teach forensic awareness, creating intricate models of crime scenes and handing someone a magnifying glass, but remarkably effective. Do you think the unsub's come across them?"

"Maybe," said Reid, with a frown. "He's forensically literate, so maybe he's read about them somewhere."

"He could even have visited," Grace mused, eyeing the tiny corpse of Davina Bishop, suspended in the plastic water of her swimming pool.

"Not likely," Reid remarked. "They're not open for public display."

"Well, that's a pity," said Grace. "I've always wanted to see them."

Reid glanced over at her again, the corner of his mouth lifting up for a moment. "Me too. Although, after this…" he trailed off, gesturing at the board.

Grace nodded.

"There are devils in the details."

0o0

"Dawn was just one of the nicest people I've ever met."

Her tone was almost apologetic, though what Kelly Everett had to feel sorry about, Emily wasn't sure. This kind of situation did strange things to people, though, and it had not been long since Kelly and her other housemate, Suresha Jones, had found Dawn Harper's mutilated body outside their house. That kind of shock, coupled with the stress of losing a friend, was apt to make someone second guess everything they said.

The two women were sitting side by side, holding one anothers' hands in a death grip; they were both pale and badly shaken, but they were focused on Emily and Rossi, and on the questions they were being asked.

There was so much pressure, in these circumstances, to be helpful to an investigation – to their friend. Emily decided to let it go.

"It's okay," she told them. "Anything you can tell us will help."

"How did you meet?" Rossi asked.

"In college," said Suresha. "Dawn and I were in the same dorm, and we both joined the climbing club Kelly ran."

Kelly swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. I worked at the gym on campus before I got my job at the ice rink. When Suresha and Dawn graduated, we decided to find a place together to save money."

"Are you a legal secretary too?" Rossi asked, but Suresha shook her head.

"Veterinary nurse. I – I keep odd hours, most of the time. I was… I was just coming in from work when I found – when I found her," she said, and then scrubbed a tear off her cheek.

"I heard Suresha shouting, and I came outside," said Kelly. "That's when – well, we called you guys."

Rossi nodded.

"Were you in all night?" Emily asked Kelly gently.

"Yes," she said, with a sort of grief-stricken gasp. "I got home from work at seven and I took the trash out – we had pizza the night before, so… Anyway, the back yard was empty when I did."

"And you didn't expect Dawn home?"

"No. Well, I did, but she works late sometimes, so it didn't worry me that she hadn't come in," Kelly explained. "When she wasn't back by the time I went to bed, I hoped she'd got a date or something."

"Yeah, she had a bad break up last year," Suresha added.

"So I texted her to give me a call if she needed a ride or whatever and went to – I just went to sleep. And outside –"

"You didn't hear anything?" Rossi asked, before she could break down.

Kelly shook her head furiously.

"What about this bad break up?" Emily asked, but Suresha shook her head, too.

"Dylan's a lying asshole – a lying _married_ asshole – but when Dawn found out he had a wife and kids, and the wife found out about Dawn, she moved him and the kids to Texas. He used to call, last year," she added. "But he hasn't been in touch in months. Dawn was just beginning to get back to normal. He really did a number on her."

"This married asshole got a last name?" Rossi asked, and jotted that and his number down.

"Is there anyone besides Dylan you think would want to hurt Dawn?"

"No," said Suresha.

"No, ma'am," said Kelly. "She's a great person to be around. She's kind, sweet – she'd drop anything to help a friend in need."

"Yeah," Suresha added. "Dawn's the token Hufflepuff." She blushed, but carried on. "She's bubbly and talkative when she gets buzzed, and maybe she's fascinated by other people's lives, but…"

"She could be a bit of a gossip," Kelly explained. "But never mean with it. She was always trying to think of ways to help people out if they were in trouble, without them finding out so they wouldn't feel bad about it."

"I can't believe anyone would want to hurt her," Suresha said, beginning to cry again.

"Even Dylan," Kelly agreed. "She was a ray of sunshine."


	14. Hypocritic Oaths

**Essential Listening: Perfect, by Alanis Morissette**

 **0o0**

"So, what can you tell me about this guy?" Detective Marr asked, leaning against the door frame.

They had reconvened in the shadow of the murder boards to grab a late dinner of slightly squashed Thai food that the delivery driver had dropped 'a little', and Marr had joined them. She was currently picking at a box of lukewarm noodles and glaring at the pictures of the diorama.

Hotch narrowed his eyes slightly. "It's too early to give a profile," he told her, and she nodded, so he continued, "this is all speculation."

Taking their cue, the rest of the team looked up from their takeout.

"He's obviously got a bit of time on his hands," Pearce remarked. "The models are intricate and exact, which takes both planning and – from what the modellers said – at least a couple of hours to get right, what with paint and glue needing to set before it can be moved. Add to that the preparation he's putting in for each murder – working on the cars and ladder, for example –"

"Not to mention how long it takes to wrench someone's tongue out," Prentiss added, with a grimace.

"Exactly," Pearce agreed. "He likely lives alone, he doesn't have a job that makes great demands on his time. He could even be part time. But given the cost of the materials he's using he's likely employed."

"We know he's watching his victims," Reid supplied, around a mouthful of prawn, "if not stalking them."

"How do we know that?" Marr asked.

"Oh, he knows when the victim's cars or properties are unattended, so we know he's aware of their habits, but he's not attacking people as part of their usual routines," Reid explained. "Uh – Andy Kirwan's work was varied, so his route to and from jobs differed every day; Gretchen Ross was attending a parent teacher ending, which wasn't a regular occurrence; Dawn Harper stayed late at work because a colleague was out, sick; and Marcus Fowler was cleaning the equipment at the sports ground after a big game – something his technician usually did, but he'd broken his leg."

"So, he likely knew some or all of them," Marr guessed, following his logic. "Because he knows enough about them to gain access when the opportunity presents itself."

"Yeah, and the fact that Davina Bishop may have let him in backs that up," Prentiss agreed. "He's obviously a familiar face around here, because not a single person interviewed by us or your team has noticed anyone strange or out of place. So, he's not only local, he's a fixture."

Dave nodded. "He's also technically skilled – enough to get inside Ian Alvarez's Garage without anyone in the family noticing; enough to take apart an airbag system so it failed to activate."

"He's definitely evolving," Morgan added. "With each murder he's getting' bolder, closer to the action."

"What about Ian Alvarez?" Marr asked. "He died after Davina Bishop, who we know the unsub drowned, but he had no marks of violence on him at all."

"He coulda cut through the ladder at any time," Dave pointed out. "It's likely he set the murder up after Andy Kirwan's car crashed into the side of _Trader Joe's_."

"Rosa Alvarez told me she'd been asking her husband to fix the siding for months," Hotch put in.

"There – you see?" Dave jabbed a chopstick in Hotch's direction. "He was lazy, he took his time getting to the DIY. It took a while for the unsub's trap to spring."

Marr nodded thoughtfully. "And then he stepped up to more hands-on methods in the meantime."

"He was probably as frustrated as Alvarez's wife was, waiting for her husband to get around to the siding," Pearce suggested.

"And now he's graduated to ligature strangulation and post-mortem mutilation," Jordan remarked, pulling a face.

"You know, there's one death that doesn't fit the pattern of evolution," Hotch commented. "Marcus Fowler."

As one, the agents nodded.

"That's got rage written all over it," Morgan reflected, as they glanced up at the photographs at the very start of the timeline. "Nothin' meticulous about it."

"Messy, brutal, unplanned – could be our trigger," Pearce proposed.

"It's such a different M.O.," Jordan said, frowning down at the file. "Are we sure it's even the same guy?"

"If we take the scenes he's adding to the diorama of the area as trophies, or kills he's claiming, then yes," said Hotch. "If someone else murdered Fowler and he was a friend or relative, it's likely he would have excluded him from the model – or else distinguished him in some way."

"I'll get our people talking to Fowler's nearest and dearest, first thing," said Marr. "If he's what set all this off, I'm guessing our guy knew him."

Prentiss nodded. "Yeah, you really don't see this level of overkill in a stranger murder unless the psychology of the unsub is much more devolved."

"You know, given how much the M.O. shifts from kill to kill, adding to the diorama is probably the strongest part of the compulsion," Morgan said. "If those are this unsub's signature, we should take a closer look at the miniature crime scenes."

"Yeah," said Reid. "I wanna take a look at the diorama in person tomorrow, anyway. From what Pearce and I were looking at earlier, it looks like the area on the model has a big impact on his area of activity. It's probably warping the geographic profile."

Pearce, who was picking at her prawn toast, nodded. "Reid suggested it might be mission-based," she said, earning her a small glare from the doctor. Dave guessed he hadn't finished formulating that thought yet. "I can't think what the mission might be right now, but the more I think about it, I have admit you're probably right."

"Gee, thanks," Reid quipped, but he looked mollified all the same.

Perhaps they'd bickered about it, Dave speculated.

"At least I don't think the town is needlessly sinister," the young agent remarked, his voice approaching something like a teasing tone.

"What?" Marr asked, amused. "What's sinister about Happy Valley?"

Pearce snorted. "Thanks for that, Reid." He shrugged, a mild smirk playing about his lips. She turned to the detective and explained her theory that naming things in 'too cheerful a manner' was asking for trouble.

When Detective Marr stopped laughing, she agreed. "Come to think of it, it used to bother me when I first moved here, after college. Everything just seemed too perfect, you know? All white picket fences and family friendly fun. Of course, after a couple of months I realised most of it is a show – the people here are still people. Good, bad, stable, messed-up – the works, same as everywhere else. They're just better at wallpapering over the naughty stuff."

"Ha – I wish I had that skill," Prentiss joked, and even Hotch chuckled.

Jordan, however, was slowly flicking through the stack of files beside her. "What if that's it?" she said slowly.

"What if what's what?" Morgan asking moving to peer over her shoulder.

"What if our unsub doesn't like that people are 'wallpapering over' the cracks in their lives?" she said, looking over at Reid and Pearce. "You said it might be a mission – what if that's his mission?"

"So, he's killing people because he thinks they're hypocrites?" Pearce asked, unconvinced.

Dave had to agree, it seemed such a petty reason to kill people over.

 _But then_ , he thought, _it only has to make sense to the unsub._

"Maybe I'm wrong," Jordan said, backing up.

"No, no," said Reid encouragingly, sparing half an irritable glance for the agent next to him, "where were you going with it?"

"It's – it's just Andy Kirwan's file says he had a recent speeding ticket," she said. "He's a private contractor, right? So he probably put his foot down trying to get to the next job ahead of time." She pulled another file towards her. "And it stood out when I first read the files through because Gretchen Ross had a fine for a parking violations outside her school – uh, I guess their parking lot isn't big enough, or something. They just struck me as kind of similar." She looked up at Pearce, levelling almost a challenging stare in her direction. "We can't find a connection in any of the usual aspects of the victimology, so, what if it really is something as petty as what he sees as hypocrisy? I mean, what are the odds the only victims we have dying in their cars had vehicle-based infractions?"

"Okay," said Hotch, as Pearce nodded, considering. "We need to take another look at our victims' backgrounds." He pulled out his phone and dialled Garcia's number. "Hey – no, I'm putting you on speaker."

Dave smiled down at his cooling dinner as Garcia complained about Aaron's lack of willingness to be 'awesome'.

"Chill, Babygirl," Morgan interrupted. "We need you to work some magic for us, okay?"

" _Ask and ye shall receive – whaddya need?"_

"Andy Kirwan and Gretchen Ross had both run into trouble in their cars before they died – anythin' else comin' up in their records?" Morgan asked.

" _Nothing major, hot stuff,"_ Garcia chirped. _"Kirwan had a string of speeding tickets, going back years, but nothing worse than that. Ross just had a couple of parking violations –"_

"A couple?" Pearce asked, before her friend could continue. "More than one?"

" _More like seven in the last six months,"_ Garcia informed her. _"And here's the ironic part – she taught the road safety course at her school."_

"Well, there's more than a whiff of hypocrisy about that," Prentiss commented, leaning forward.

"Tch-yeah," Reid agreed. "Garcia, let me ask you this – do any of the others have citations for anything?"

" _Uh…"_

"Anything," Rossi added. This felt like progress; if they could pin down what was driving this guy to pick his victims, they would be further on the way to stopping him. "Even if it seems insignificant."

" _Uh, okay, how about Davina Bishop?"_ Garcia's fingers danced across the keys. _"There's a report here saying officers were called to her home on several occasions over the summer – seems Ms Bishop liked to celebrate a little too loudly for her neighbour's liking. Looks like our famous designer liked things colourful! According to this, officers had to ask her to tone it down on seven separate occasions."_

"Only in the summer?" Pearce queried. "Don't tell me –"

" _Davina Bishop threw a lot of pool parties."_

Pearce groaned. "This guy's got a weird sense of humour. It's like he's trying to make the punishment fit the crime."

Dave raised an eyebrow at the Gilbert and Sullivan reference.

"And Fowler was beaten to death with his own bat," Morgan reminded them. "What might have started out as a rage killing using a weapon of opportunity turned into his inspiration."

"What had Fowler done, though?" Aaron asked. "Ross and Kirwan broke traffic laws and were killed in their cars. Bishop held antisocial pool parties and wound up drowned in her pool."

"The Detective who worked that case when it first came in talked to Fowler's co-workers," said Marr, flicking through one of the files. "Here it is – they said he'd had some trouble with the school board." She pulled out a statement. "Several parents had complained that Fowler was showing favouritism to certain students on his team, and unfairly punishing others – even though the school has a strict equality policy that students are required to sign at the start of each semester."

"Hypocrisy again," said Dave. "The kind of thing that annoys the hell out of your neighbours and colleagues, but not something someone would ordinarily commit murder for."

"I think it's clear we're quite a way outside the ordinary with this one," Hotch responded.

"What about Alvarez, or Harper?" Pearce asked. "What marked them for a humorous death?"

"Uh, well, Dawn Harper's housemates said she was lovely, but that she could be a bit of a gossip at times," Prentiss recalled. "And given the post-mortem mutilation –"

"Dead men tell no tales," Reid reflected.

"And it's hard to spread rumours if you haven't got a tongue," Morgan agreed. "Alvarez?"

Marr shook her head. "Nothing out of the ordinary so far. Maybe the re-interviews will turn something up tomorrow."

" _Something involving a ladder, presumably,"_ Garcia observed. _"I'll keep digging in the meantime."_

"Okay," said Hotch tiredly, as Garcia hung up. "We're not going to get anywhere until the morning now. Let's call it a night."


	15. Star-crossed and Can't Escape

**(Sorry it's late, folks! My bad!)**

 **Essential Listening – Cherry Bomb, by Joan Jett**

 **0o0**

"You know," Grace muttered under her breath, "sometimes, when Hotch says 'let's call it a night', I think we ought to just stay up and set up road blocks around potential victims. It would be quicker."

Emily snorted, then covered it by pretending to cough. You couldn't giggle on a crime scene, even if your resident grumpy Brit had a point.

A 5 a.m. callout was not the best way to start the day, and Emily couldn't help but yawn as they walked down the cordoned off street. "Hey, a few hours sleep is better than none," she remarked, but Grace shook her head.

"Not always. I feel like I was too deep asleep, you know? Like I didn't properly wake up and now I'm sleepwalking."

"You were up all night talking to Troy, weren't you?" Emily guessed, and Grace sent her a sharp glance that told her she had her.

"Not _all_ night…"

Emily hid another laugh. "You should know better by now, the BAU always catches you out if you want to play away on a school night," she told her, and narrowly avoided the elbow to the ribs it almost earned her.

"Sorry to drag you folks outta your beds," said Detective Marr, who looked like she'd had about as little sleep as the rest of them. "But as soon as I saw this I knew you'd wanna see it in place – and the neighbourhood will be waking up soon. As soon as you're happy, I want to take him down."

"Take him down?" Reid echoed, from somewhere behind them, and then yawned. Emily glanced at him; his hair was sticking up at random angles and he had yet to tie his tie. He looked like a PhD student who'd been caught on a night out.

It was ridiculously adorable, but not a great look for out here. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Grace turn, roll her eyes and drop back unobtrusively, presumably to tell him to run a hand through his hair at least.

"Yeah, uh… the guy opposite runs deliveries for a company down town, so he was up at three," she said, and led them across the road, where the locals had erected a sort of canvas modesty tent. "Called us. I got forensics and the M.E. on it straight away. Didn't think this was something we'd want to wait on."

Was it Emily's imagination, or was it a little higher up than those things usually were?

They rounded the corner of it, and suddenly she understood why.

"Oh, uh…"

"Whoa, well that's just…" Morgan observed, trailing off.

"Yikes," said Grace, as she and Reid brought up the rear. Something instinctive must have kicked in, because her voice and body language slipped immediately into something quite different from the exhausted, easily amused agent she had been moments before. "Does he live here?" she asked, while the rest of them were still gaping up at their latest victim.

"Not according to the delivery driver," said Marr, consulting her notes. "Name's Billy 'something', he's pretty sure he lives across town, and he works in a Diner over in Sunnyside. Driver thinks he's the boyfriend of the teenage girl who lives here – Sara."

"This is not something she'd gonna want to see," said Morgan darkly, as they stared up at her late boyfriend.

"Are the family awake?" Grace asked, all traces of tiredness and humour entirely banished.

"No," Marr told them. "Neighbour told me there are kids in there, too."

"Great," Emily murmured.

Beside her, Reid nodded numbly.

"I think you should leave him," said Grace, all business. "This isn't something we want to rush forensics on – and I'm not suggesting that you are, but we don't want to act prematurely just because his killing is becoming more public."

"But the family –" Marr began, staring at her.

"I know, but we can't compromise the integrity of the scene until we know we've got absolutely everything," Grace argued. "This scene is more flamboyant than the ones before it, which would have taken more time. The more intricate the arrangement of the scene, the more he's telling us – and the more chances he's left something behind. We need to preserve everything we can, from the ligatures he used to the soil and snow beneath the tree. I'll help you deal with the family," she continued, before the detective could object. "We go in now, get the kids up and away from the windows, and have a couple of liaison officers keep them on the far side of the house until we're done. We need to interview them all, anyway."

Emily exchanged a glance with Reid; usually Grace was a lot less brisk than this. Something about the scene or the situation must have pushed her buttons.

"Alright," said Marr, arching an eyebrow. "I'll put a call out for a couple of liaisons. Won't take more than twenty minutes to get them here."

Grace nodded briskly. "Okay. In the meantime, I'm going to see what the neighbours who are already here have to say," said Grace, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the line of police tape, which was already attracting spectators, even at this unmercifully early hour.

She stalked off, Morgan following her lead. He sent Emily a glance that said both 'what the hell?' and 'I'll keep an eye on her' over his shoulder.

"She can be a little sharp, huh?" Marr asked, watching them go.

"Mostly only with me," said Reid, whose brain-to-mouth filter was evidently malfunctioning this morning. He blushed faintly.

"I'm sorry about that," said Emily, as Marr assessed the young doctor curiously. "She's not normally so… brusque."

Marr gave them a slight smile. "Nah, I needed to hear it. She's right, we can't risk missing anything with a guy like this on the loose." She gazed over to the tape line, where Grace and Morgan were making enquiries, and narrowed her eyes. "She was a cop before she was an agent, right?"

"Yeah," said Emily. "In London."

"Yeah," Marr echoed, and chuckled. "There's the walk – you never lose that beat, no matter what you try. The not-too-fast, not-too-slow, I-know-you-know-I'm-watching-you-but-it's-okay-I'm-a-cop walk. None of us can shake that. Agent Morgan has it too. But Pearce, she was used to giving orders and having them carried out."

Marr snapped her fingers, to demonstrate. She smiled. "I like her."

She departed, clearly intent on coordinating the forensic effort with as little noise as possible – at least until the family liaisons arrived.

Emily let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. "That could have been awkward." She looked over at Grace's back; her body language was that of a professional agent. Maybe a little too professional. "What's eating her?"

"I don't know," said Reid, thoughtfully. Emily glanced in his direction. He was staring over at Grace, too, a curious expression on his face, as if he hadn't properly paid attention to her in a while. "Maybe…" He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe the lack of sleep and the scene triggered her Met training, or something."

"She had responsibility for members of her team, didn't she?" Emily asked, thinking about what Marr had said. "I mean, she was a team leader?"

"Yeah," Reid said, with a frown. "Detective Inspector. I got the impression she pretty much ran the department, under DCI Lightfoot."

"I guess that's it, then," she mused. "Something sparked a memory and her training took over."

She dragged her eyes away from her friend and started towards the scene proper, wondering if Grace was so used to being in charge of a small unit – and briskly so, at that – why she usually preferred to hang back and let the others do the ordering around? Why was she burying her leadership behaviour so effectively that it only came out on sub-zero, pre-dawn scenes after too little sleep?

 _Maybe that was partly why she left – something happened and she thought it was her leadership that made it happen,_ Emily decided, and filed the thought away for later, when there wasn't a murderer to catch and she could think about it properly.

"So, if he's killing people for petty hypocrisies, what was Billy Townsend's transgression?" Reid asked, doing up his tie.

Emily noted that he had dragged out the worst of the tangles in his hair now. Not for the first time, she wondered why he didn't just tie it up, then had to force an image of slightly piratical Reid out of her head.

Fighting the smirk that image raised, she followed his gaze. "Well, the nudity and the bedsheets might be telling," she observed. "Didn't Detective Marr say his girlfriend lived here?"

"Yeah."

"So maybe he was intending to pay her a visit."

"Or has done in the past," Reid mused. "Why hang him from the tree, though?" He squinted up into the snow-laden branches. "Must have taken some doing."

"When I was a teenager, my boyfriend used to climb up the tree outside my bedroom when my parents were home," Emily mused, her eyes on the first story window.

Reid's eyebrows lifted into his hair at this admission, and Emily shrugged.

"What? We were all seventeen once."

"I'm beginning to think that maybe I wasn't," he remarked (and again, Emily had to wonder what being a teenage genius had done to him) and crossed his arms. "Okay – uh – so assuming this is a regular enough occurrence for our Unsub to take notice of it, why did he consider it hypocritical?"

"And how did he know?" Emily added. "I imagine it's not the kind of thing Billy Townsend and his girlfriend spread around. I mean, probably a couple of people at school know – that's how teenagers function – but a likely unrelated adult? It's hardly a matter of public record."

"He's gotta have some way of picking out his victims," Reid said. "If we can figure that out, then…"

Then they'd have a shot at him.

"Yeah," Emily agreed. She peered up at the boy, whose wide, staring eyes seemed particularly eerie against the skeletal, snow-laden branches. "His hair's dry," she pointed out. "It snowed last night, right?"

"Yeah, it did," Reid said at once, with the air of someone who had been awake to see it. "Between about midnight and two a.m."

"So he must have been put up there after two, but before three, when the guy opposite found him."

Reid pulled a face. "That's not a long window."

Emily nodded. "Well, that means he can't have killed him here."

"You know what else is weird," Reid said, moving close enough to get a better look at the snow, but not too close to disturb it. "Look around the base of the tree. There and there," he pointed. "Those indentations must be where snow was disturbed from the branches when the unsub got him up there, but, uh… there are no footprints. I mean, there are no footprints anywhere near it – and the ones on the path are mush from all the law enforcement traffic."

Emily stared at the snow. He was right; apart from the pattern of fallen snow, it was almost pristine. "What did he do, levitate the kid up there?" she mused, aloud.

Reid snorted, "Tch-yeah. Maybe we should get Pearce over to see if there's anything occult going on," he suggested, and oddly Emily thought he was speaking only half in jest. "Though she's in a weird enough mood as it is, this morning," he added, more quietly.

"Okay, so he had to get Billy up there somehow," said Emily, casting about for ideas. Her eyes travelled over the heads of the spectators beyond the yellow tape and over to the neighbours' vehicles. "What about a flat-bed pick-up," she suggested. He could have reversed up to the kerb without disturbing the snow on the sidewalk, or around the tree."

"Any tyre treads must have been obliterated by now," Reid groused, gesturing at the melee of service boot prints. "But it could've left…" Reid crouched down at the edge of the snow. "Yes, look," he said, pointing at a series of very small, circular marks in the snow. "See that discolouration? I bet that came off the back of the truck while it was parked up here, cooling."

"Good eye, Reid," Emily remarked, joining him. He sent her a grin as she waved a forensic technician over.

"Not bad for an hour's sleep and three coffees," he quipped. Then his expression changed. "Hey, Prentiss? Is he wearing a ring?"

0o0

"I realise this is an extremely difficult time for you," said Grace, as Billy Townsend's traumatised girlfriend sobbed into her mother's shoulder, "but if you feel up to answering a few questions for us, it might help us catch the person who did this to Billy."

"Can't this wait?" Mary Derwin, the girl's mother, asked.

"It can," said Grace. "We can come back later, when Sara's feeling stronger."

"No," said Sara, making a valiant effort to stop crying. "I want to help catch this son of a bitch."

"Sara, language," her mother scolded, but gently, and mostly out of habit.

Sara glanced at her, then met Grace's eyes quite steadily.

"Mrs Derwin, I think Sara could do with a hot cup of tea, don't you?" she said, interpreting the unspoken request.

"What? Oh. Yes – um, if you need me, honey, you just call," said Mary, sending Grace a ferocious look that said if she made her daughter cry again there would be hell to pay.

"Lots of sugar," Grace suggested, uncowed.

She turned back to Sara, prepared to give the young woman a few moments to compose herself, but Sara was watching her mother's retreated back, and the moment the door closed, she beckoned Grace closer.

"I didn't want to talk in front of Mom," she said. "Billy…" she swallowed, obviously very emotional, "Billy and I – he used to climb the tree outside my window, and…" She trailed off, blushing through her tears, and Grace came to her rescue.

"We'd guessed," she said. "I remember being seventeen," she added, on Sara's shocked expression.

"Oh, well… um…" she said, apparently at a bit of a loss.

"Why don't you tell me a little about you both?" Grace suggested. "When did you two start seeing each other?"

"The first week of ninth grade," she said, futilely trying to rub away some of her tears with her handkerchief. Grace did the mental gymnastics necessary to pin down their age to about fourteen. "He transferred in – he and his dad moved from Poughkeepsie, in New York." She paused, looking horrified. "Oh God, his Dad –"

"Someone's with him," Grace assured her, and Sara nodded, some of the stress leaving her stricken face.

"Good, that's… good. Anyway, um – we hit it off right away." She gave Grace a watery smile. "Sent me a note in first period, asking if he could walk me home."

She looked down at her knees, momentarily stricken.

"So, a couple of years, then. And it was love at first sight?" Grace prompted.

"No," Sara laughed. "For about an hour and a half I thought he was a bit of a douche, but I think he was playing up because he was nervous about being in a new school."

Grace nodded, a bittersweet smile on her face at the image that conjured. "Can you think of anyone giving him trouble in school?" she asked.

The possibility that this murder had nothing to do with their unsub was exceptionally slim, but she had to check, even so.

Sara shook her head. "Nope, he gets along with everybody. He's not a jock," she added, a touch defensively, "but he does okay for friends."

"I imagine your friendship group kind of adopted him when you two got together," Grace said, and Sara nodded.

"Yeah."

"And he's doing okay in his schoolwork, as far as you know?"

"Yeah, we got our end of semester average last week – he's third highest in the class. I'm second highest," she added, with the barest hint of genuine pride.

"Can I ask how long the tree-climbing antics have been going on?" Grace asked, as delicately as she could, and Sara flushed pink.

"Um, about six months," she admitted, in a small voice. "I… we were going to get married."

"You don't have to justify yourself," said Grace gently. "It's okay."

"No, I mean – I know. But we were. See?" She pulled a leather cord that had been around her neck out to show her: there was a small gold ring with a tiny diamond set in it tied at the end of the cord. "He proposed in the summer," she explained. "We weren't going to tell anyone until we finished school. We were going to be together for always."

"I'm so sorry, Sara." Grace gave her arm an ineffectual pat as the girl was engulfed by a fresh wave of tears.

 _How did a seventeen year old kid afford a thing like that?_ she wondered, but before she could ask, Sara told her.

"It was his mom's. She died when he was little," she said, tucking the ring safely back inside her pyjamas. "You won't tell my mom and dad, will you?"

Grace smiled gently at the young woman's pleading expression. "I won't," she promised. "But you should. It might come out in the media, later, too," she added.

Sara nodded, looking relieved. "I'll tell them – but not today. I don't think I can… I want to keep it to myself for a little while longer."

"It was your secret," Grace said, understanding the need to preserve something so precious for just a little while longer.

"Yeah," said Sara. "Plus, they'll hit the roof." She held out her hand, showing Grace another ring – this one silver and stamped with a design she couldn't quite make out. "The school makes everybody take a pledge of chastity in tenth grade," she explained. "You get this ring and a certificate, and the assumption that you'll stick to it indefinitely."

"Despite evidence to the contrary," Grace said, before she could stop herself, "none of those things generally dissuade teenagers who are really in love."

"No, they don't," said Sara, wetly. "It sounds so bad, but I'm kinda glad it didn't dissuade us. Now he's gone – I…"

 _Can't imagine never being with him,_ Grace guessed, as the girl fell silent.

"Was Billy intending to come over last night?" she asked, changing tack.

"No," Sara sniffled. "He had a late shift at the diner he works at."

Grace raised an eyebrow at that.

"Plus, with the snow, we decided to wait," Sara admitted. "We didn't want anyone to find any footprints or anything."

"Smart," said Grace. "I hate to have to ask, but did you hear anything last night?"

"No," said Sara. "I didn't sleep in my room last night. Dorothy-Ann – that's my baby sister –had a nightmare. I slept in her bed so she didn't get scared. She's five. She doesn't like to admit she gets frightened to Mom and Dad."

"A mark of honour, perhaps?" Grace guessed, and Sarah gave a wet chuckle.

"Yeah, I guess. Little tough," she said, fondly, glancing at the door leading to the room where a family liaison was keeping her three younger siblings entertained. "When the storms come in, she shouts louder than the thunder because she 'wants to tell it who's boss'." She shook her head. "I wish I felt that tough, right now."

"Hey," said Grace. "I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you absolutely are that tough. And it's okay to not be, from time to time."

Sara nodded, though Grace knew just hearing something like that could be a million miles away from actually believing it. They both looked up as Mary Derwin came back in, obviously poised to turf Grace out if her daughter looked like she needed it. On seeing her a little more composed than when she'd left, she relaxed a little.

"Um, Agent Pearce?" Sara asked, as her mother pressed a cup of tea into her daughter's hands.

"Yes?"

"Promise me you'll get him?" she begged. "The guy who did this to… to Billy."

"Sara…" her mother said softly, probably just as aware as Grace was that sometimes cases like this just didn't get solved.

Grace looked at her for a long moment, weighing her words carefully before speaking. "I don't make promises like that," she said sadly. "Sometimes, with the best will in the world you can't deliver on them, no matter what you do. But I will tell you this," she went on, as Sara's face visibly fell. "There's eight federal agents on my team, and at least a hundred law enforcement officers and detectives from Clackamas County and Portland, all prepared to throw everything they've got into finding him and bringing him to justice. Come hell, or high water. That good enough?"

Sara's expression hardened; there was something close to determination in it now.

"Good enough."


	16. Local Knowledge

**Sorry it's late** _ **again**_ **this week. We put on a musical in twenty-four hours flat, and while it was incredible, it was also exhausting xD Thanks for your patience!**

 **Essential Listening: Suburbia, by Pet Shop Boys**

 **0o0**

"Still no sign of his clothes," said Hotch, dropping into a chair at the head of the table. "And no indication of violence at his father's house."

"It's like he just walked out and never came back," said Todd, sadly. Derek guessed that after going with Hotch to inform Billy Townsend's Dad that his son wouldn't be coming home. "His Dad was…" she trailed off, scrubbing a hand over her face.

The others nodded. It wasn't like they needed her to finish.

"He said he was used to Billy staying out late because of his job," Hotch added.

 _Great_ , Derek thought. _Square one, then._

"Do you think he kept the clothes?" Reid asked.

"Well, it's not like he needs the trophies," said Prentiss, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at the pictures of the diorama.

"I think it's just – you know – more modelling behaviour," said Pearce, leaning on her elbow and following Prentiss' gaze. "Like it's not complete until it matches what he's mapped out for the model."

"He's a perfectionist," Hotch agreed.

"So he's dumping the things that don't fit," Derek nodded slowly. "The clothes, the tongue –"

"But not Billy Townsend's pledge ring," said Reid. "He's setting the scene."

"'Hey, look what this one made me do'," Pearce mused, an unpleasant expression on her face.

It had taken up residence when she'd left the Derwin's house that morning, and hadn't retreated. He wondered what was making her snap to attention on this one. Usually her mask of professionalism might as well have been bolted on – in front of the public, at least.

He looked up in time to see Hotch glance first at Pearce, then at Prentiss and Reid, who were also paying more attention to their resident cheerleader for the occult than usual, then finally at Derek, who gave a minute shrug. He was damned if he knew what was eating her – or even if anything was. For all he knew, this was simply a taste of the old Pearce: the one Kate Joyner had hinted at back in New York*, that she was usually careful to keep tucked away, out of sight.

Hotch's eyebrows knitted together, and for a moment Derek steeled himself to stare his boss down, but then his cell rang. Distracted, he pulled it out of his suit jacket.

"Hey, Dave. What've you got?" Hotch asked, putting the phone down on the table for them all to hear.

" _Well, the unsub definitely paid the model a visit sometime between when Pearce and Prentiss looked it over yesterday, and when I got here this morning,"_ he informed them. _"There's a new scene."_

Derek ticked off the details of the Townsend crime scene in his head as Rossi listed them from the model.

"What was that?" Pearce asked, sharply, interrupting him.

" _What part?"_ asked, a tone of surprise in his voice.

"That last bit, about the base of the tree," she said, frowning.

" _Oh – there are little red dots all around it,"_ said Rossi indistinctly. Derek guessed he was leaning in for a closer look. _"Kind of ovals, tapered at one end. I think they've been painted on."_

"I don't remember those," said Pearce, looking up at Reid and Prentiss – who had spent a lot of their morning under the Derwin's oak tree – for confirmation.

"Me either," said Reid, as Emily shook her head.

"The snow might've covered them up," Derek suggested.

"But Billy Townsend was dry," Prentiss argued. "So we know he went up in the tree after the snowstorm."

"Maybe he set part of the scene up, then went to get Billy," said Pearce. "What with the cold, we won't have an accurate time of death until the autopsy."

" _The question is, what was he trying to say?"_ Rossi asked, from the table. _"What were they supposed to be?"_

"Blood stains?" Jordan asked, puzzled. "I thought the unsub hanged him."

"I couldn't see any cuts on Billy when they cut him down," said Reid, frowning.

"We'll need to wait on the autopsy for that, too," Pearce pointed out, and he nodded.

"Okay," said Prentiss. "What else is small and red, and might not be out of place in the kind of message this guy is trying to send about a kid who broke his chastity pledge with a girl he was intending to marry?"

There was a pause.

"I actually haven't got a clue," said Reid, drawing a smirk from Derek, who thought the kid looked pretty surprised at this state of affairs.

"Either way, we need to know what he left for us," said Hotch.

"I'll speak to forensics," said Pearce, getting up from the table. "See what came out of the snow when they got it to the lab."

"Did anyone see the scene being added?" Derek asked, as she hurried away.

" _Not a single person – even the two sentries,"_ said Rossi, sounding a little annoyed. _"There've been two people here every hour since they spotted Dawn Harper's murder, but no one has seen anything."_

"He can't be adding to them on-site, then," Emily reasoned. "Detailed work like that takes time."

"So, what?" Derek asked. "He's making the tiny scenes and then murdering people to match?"

"Or is he murdering people and then making the models?" Reid added.

" _It could be a bit of both,"_ Rossi suggested. _"He could plan the scene out ahead of time, make a basic model and then fill in the details after the fact."_

"Someone had a busy night then," Jordan observed, raising an eyebrow.

" _And he's definitely not adding to the scenes on the diorama,"_ said Rossi. _"I can see where he's cut around the board to put a new piece in."_

"So, is he keeping the original parts of the model?" Reid postulated, as Prentiss argued that this would still take a bit of time, and Rossi assured her that the sentries were just as frustrated as the team were.

"There are your trophies," Hotch murmured.

They looked up as Pearce came back in, slipping her cell back in her pocket.

"Anything?" Derek asked.

"They found rose petals in the meltwater," she said. "Which is in particularly poor taste, if you ask me."

" _How… romantic,"_ Rossi snarked.

"We need to find where Billy Townsend was murdered," said Hotch, decisively.

"Detective Marr's speaking to his boss at the diner," said Prentiss, checking her notes. "He worked three shifts a week there since last January. Maybe they'll be able to point us in the right direction."

" _Uh, guys?"_ said Rossi, _"you might want to ask her to check the alley out the back of the diner. On the diorama, the dumpster's knocked flat, and everything's spilling out. It seems uncharacteristically untidy for a model like this."_

Reid jumped to his feet and pored over the photographs pinned to the board. "The dumpster's not knocked over here," he said, after a moment. "And this was taken just before we landed the other day."

"Son of a bitch," Derek remarked. "He made us a signpost."

"That's unusually helpful," Pearce remarked.

"His compulsion to record the crime in detail on the model is obviously stronger than his desire to avoid detection," said Prentiss. "I mean, we'd probably have found the kill site eventually, but he couldn't help putting it on the diorama, which meant we couldn't help but find it quicker."

" _Alright,"_ said Rossi. _"I'm heading back – there's not much else I can do from here, anyway. I'll stay on hands-free."_

"Alright, so what do we know?" Hotch asked, pulling them all back into the huddle.

"When he kills in person, he does it at night," said Prentiss. "So he probably works predominantly during the day."

"Blue collar," Derek added. "Highly technical."

"He's meticulous, plans detailed modelled scenes, doesn't leave forensic traces – but at the same time, he attacks his victims almost opportunistically," Pearce put in.

" _So he's probably older,"_ Rossi supplied. _"In his forties to sixties."_

"That would also explain the blitz attacks," Jordan suggested. "If he's not as physically fit as his victims. That's why he attacked Dawn Harper from behind, and why he drugged Davina Bishop."

"And probably why that dumpster was knocked over outside the diner," Hotch agreed. "Billy Townsend was young and fit, and the unsub likely didn't have chance to drug him if he attacked him when he left work. He put up a fight."

"He's got a twisted sense of humour," Reid reflected. "And he's obviously of above-average intelligence."

Derek nodded. "He probably feels ignored, or passed over at home and at work.

"I'm guessing he lives alone, based on the time something like this would take," said Jordan. "I mean, if he's working at the same time."

"He's either quite charming, or totally unnoticeable," said Pearce. "And capable of coming and going in City Hall, and tinkering with a model that is being watched twenty-four-seven without anyone paying him the slightest bit of mind."

"Someone who's seen there so often that nobody spares him a second glance?" Prentiss suggested.

" _So, we're looking at someone who works at City Hall?"_ Jordan asked.

"That would explain how he knows about the citations," Reid expanded. "Some minor things like traffic violations don't get processed through the courts – they go through civil proceedings instead."

"Are there any janitors or maintenance staff who work at City Hall?" Derek asked, but Prentiss was already dialling.

"Hey Garcia," she said, when the goddess herself picked up. "We need your brilliance. I need a list of any blue collar workers who work at City Hall."

There was a pause.

"What, all of them?" Prentiss double checked, obviously surprised. "Okay. Get it as soon as you can." She hung up. "Garcia says there's no one specifically on the books at City Hall for that kind of work. Apparently it's all farmed out – and the records for that are all snarled up in the system."

"Can she unsnarl them?" Pearce asked.

"She's on it now."

Pearce pulled a face at the thought of all that red tape and file extraction. "Rather her than me."

0o0

"Well, that was a hard morning," remarked Detective Marr, coming in from the cold. It had obviously been snowing again, since she shook some of it out of her dark hair as she unwound her scarf.

It was also technically late-afternoon, but no one was about to correct her.

"You were right about the kill site at the diner," she said, pulling off her heavy coat. "Had forensics set up camp before I left. Whatever happened back there made a mess – particularly with the layers of slush and snow."

"Any useable prints?" Pearce asked, interested.

"Not in terms of shoes," said Marr. "But someone was obviously dragged outta there, and I'm guessing it was probably Billy. There's a bloodied length of two-by-four, and we sent that for fingerprints."

"Any more of it at the scene?" Morgan asked, joining them and dropping a hot drink in Pearce's hand.

Jordan accepted hers gratefully. There really hadn't been enough sleep in the last three days.

"Not that I saw, but there might be – like I said, it was a mess."

"If he's sticking to pattern, he would probably have brought it with him as part of his murder kit," said Reid.

"We haven't seen any evidence of it before," Pearce reminded him.

"Absence of evidence isn't the same as evidence of absence," he retorted, and it was a little more tart than perhaps it could have been.

Pearce glared at him. "Of this I am aware," she told him, her voice approaching a growl.

Jordan winced. They had been operating under a kind of truce for the past couple of days, and this really wasn't the time for a relapse. There was a dangerous sort of moment, where all the members of the BAU tensed, ready for a fight, but then the moment passed.

"I'm just saying we should look at the earlier murders, just in case," said Grace, removing her attention from the genius and glaring at the murder board instead.

"Whatever," Reid muttered, but it was under his breath, and Jordan was reasonably sure no one else had heard.

 _Two steps forward, one step back_ , she thought.

Prentiss appeared, a phone pressed to her ear. "Okay Garcia – yes, I'm doing it now." She turned one of the laptops open on the table around for the rest of them to see. "Okay, go ahead Garcia. This is the CCTV from outside the diner Billy Townsend worked at. Uh, this is last night, ten minutes after closing."

They all leaned in for a better view. The image was a little fuzzy, but a young man of Billy's description could be seen exiting through the back door. They watched as he began to walk away, then turned as if someone had called out to him. He walked back across the screen and deeper into the alley, out of sight of the cameras.

"That's it," said Prentiss. "Garcia said no one goes into or comes out of the alley until the diner opens the next morning. She paused, obviously listening to the phone. "Yes, I'm telling them. Alright – goodbye, Garcia. Stop drinking coffee."

She rolled her eyes, hanging up. "You can see the lights of a vehicle at about two a.m., but that's it."

"So that's when he went to pick Billy up," said Rossi. "He killed him just after midnight and concealed him in the alley until he'd set most of the scene up."

"This is the first time he's hit someone who was exactly where they were supposed to be," Rossi mused. "All the others were deviating from their routines, but according to both his father and the diner owner, he always worked that shift, and he always closed up."

"His compulsion to add to the model is forcing him to change the way he does things," Hotch observed.

"Or he's just getting' bolder," Morgan put in. "He's killed seven people now, and not been caught."

"He's beginning to feel invincible," Prentiss said, frowning at the board.

"Which is not great for the people in my district," Detective Marr remarked heavily. "Nobody's perfect, and if he's going after hypocrites then he's got victims practically linin' up for him."

There was a murmur of frustrated agreement. Jordan took a sip of her coffee, considering whether to raise the spectre of a public appeal.

 _No_ , she decided. _If we go public with this right now, there will be a panic. Better to limit the press to saying that investigations into Harper and Townsend's deaths are ongoing, given how willing they are to help us keep a lid on things. And this kind of unsub thrives on attention – we don't want to add any more fuel to the fire._

She raised an eyebrow, surprised at herself. Perhaps she was picking this stuff up, after all.

"Okay, so we know he's targeting people with indiscretions," said Hotch, rubbing his face. "Parking fines, speeding tickets, a nepotistic sports coach, a disruptive party animal, the office gossip and the kid who's breaking a vow of chastity prescribed by the school board." He narrowed his eyes. "What do we have on Ian Alvarez?"

"Uh, interviews with his neighbours turned up no end of complaints," said Morgan, who had coordinated the recanvassing while Detective Marr was busy with Dawn Harper and Billy Townsend's relatives. "Almost everyone we talked to told us the same thing: they like Rosa Alvarez and the kids well enough, but Ian was a bit of a creep. He'd been caught spying on the women in the neighbourhood on multiple occasions. Most of the neighbours had had words with him about it at one time or another."

"So he was a Peeping Tom," said Reid thoughtfully. "Well – uh – at least that explains the ladder, I guess."

"What bugs me is how he knew about Billy and Sara," said Pearce, gazing sadly at the picture Billy's dad had given them of the two of them.

Jordan followed her gaze; it had been taken in the summer, somewhere on Mount Scott. They looked happy and innocent, a bright future in front of them and everything to live for.

"Yeah," she said aloud, mentally cursing the man who had taken it all away from them. "It's not like they were broadcasting the nature of their relationship."

Pearce nodded. "Sara struck me as someone who wouldn't spread that kind of thing around."

"That's the impression we got of Billy from the interviews," Marr added sadly.

"And it's not the kind of thing that would show up anywhere official," Prentiss reasoned.

"Alright," said Hotch. "Prentiss, Rossi – head to the morgue, see what the autopsy of Billy Townsend tells us. "Morgan, I want you to hit the streets around the diner with Detective Marr, see what the regulars and the other businesses can tell us."

"They're gonna want to know if they can open up," said the detective, collecting her jacket. "Forensics are still working out back, but there's nothing tying the unsub to the inside of the diner, so I was going to give them the go ahead for tomorrow. That okay with you guys?"

"That's fine," said Hotch, nodding. "Jordan, you and I are going to update Mayor Halliday and have the guards watching over City Hall debrief us again, see if there's something they forgot. Reid, you wanted to take a look at the diorama."

"Uh, yeah – I would."

"Good. Pearce, you're with Reid."

Several people winced, and then pretended that they hadn't.

"Right-oh, boss," said Pearce, grabbing her notebook and tapping Reid in the shoulder with it. "Let's go, boy wonder."

He scowled at her, but he followed her out to the parking lot, Hotch and Jordan following at just enough of a distance to observe their colleagues, but not close enough to get involved if they started sniping at one another.

They seemed to have put aside their earlier disgruntlement, however.

"The urge to throw snowballs is quite intense," Pearce called over her shoulder as they trudged through the snowy parking lot.

"Do, please resist until we've finished the case," said Hotch, but without a trace of annoyance.

"I'll do my best," Pearce promised, flourishing her arm with just enough over-the-top drama that even Reid snorted.

Jordan smiled to herself. It was easy, sometimes, to forget that these tough, often troubled agents were also people – and frankly, quite mad people, at that.

"Do you wanna build a snowman?" she asked, innocently, and Hotch shot her a Look that told her exactly how many times his small son had made him watch _Frozen_.

Reid peered over the roof at them, puzzled. He turned to Pearce, who was wearing a wry smile. "Pop culture?" he asked.

She nodded and patted his shoulder. "I'll tell you in the car."

0o0

*See Moments of Grace – Season Three, Act Three: Thicker than Water


	17. Fish Eye

**I FINISHED IT ON A FRIDAY, GET IN!**

 **Thank you for your kind words and patience! I feel a hell of a lot better now, though I'm still mostly stuck on the sofa, and I have about 85% of my voice back, which is presumably annoying for my neighbours who were probably enjoying a break from all the singing. Anyway, back to it.**

 **The best part about asking Mr Parlanchina to post my apologies (apart from the fact that he apparently did it four days late) is that I had no idea what he had written until the reviews started rolling in xD**

 **Sometimes I am reminded that I married exactly the right person.**

 **Essential listening: The Magnifying Glass, The Joy Formidable**

 **0o0**

Spencer peered closely at the miniature crime scene outside the diner. Every detail from the preliminary forensic report had been painstakingly recreated, even down to the trash strewn around from the overturned dumpster and the drag-marks in the grubby slush.

"He's got to be taking pictures," he mused aloud, and Pearce – who had been lurking nearby – made a noise of agreement.

"It'd be worth checking his phone, when we bring him in."

"Yeah…"

Spencer glanced in her direction. She had been quiet since they had arrived, but not in an antagonistic sort of way. He suspected that Hotch had put them together because of their moment of friction earlier; although their boss's methods of problem solving within the team dynamic were various and often quite cunning, he'd apparently decided that simply putting them in the same place and letting them work it out until they were tired was the most efficient approach to getting them to stop arguing.

Or he was just sick of having to deal with it. One of the two.

Since they'd arrived, she'd let Spencer concentrate on the model and simply stood nearby, looking for all the world like she was his uninterested bodyguard. Although she might well have considered this a form of babysitting (not the word he would use to describe it himself), she was probably just allowing them both to play to their strengths. That way, he got an uninterrupted opportunity to memorise the diorama in preparation for the next inevitable, macabre change, which his eidetic memory made him particularly apt to do, while she used her experience as a cop to assess the room and the people in it.

Although he was perfectly capable of assessing body language and behaviour, her time in the London Metropolitan Police had given her the ability to read a crowd in a way he couldn't hope to match. Yet, at any rate.

He was engaged in examining the as-yet untouched parts of the diorama – just in case – when the unmistakable sound of Pearce's official telling-someone-off voice startled him.

"Excuse me," she said, and Spencer stood up to see what was going on. She was already walking away from the model and towards a man in his mid-forties who was wearing a tell-tale deer-in-the-headlights look. "You dropped that," she said sternly, pointing at an empty sandwich packet in the middle of the floor.

The man, who had not stopped travelling towards the door, made a gesture conveying that she didn't know what she was talking about and slipped out between the security screens before she could catch up with him.

Aware that her sense that could be described as sixth was not to be ignored, Spencer followed her, arriving at her side just as the unrepentant man disappeared out of the main doors. She glared after him, her hands on her hips.

"Honestly, the bin was like three feet away from him," she complained aloud, before stooping and sweeping up the packet he had dropped. "Lazy git."

She dropped it in the trash can which – as she had said – was in spitting distance from where the specimen had failed to dispose of it and scowled at Spencer.

"Some people," she complained and he nodded. "Sometimes the lack of common courtesy is just astounding."

"Yes ma'am."

They turned as one to find an older gentleman in a winter coat and a flat cap shaking his head.

"Seems like people today think the rules just don't apply to them," he remarked, putting a drinks container in the trashcan. "It was kind of you to pick it up for him."

"Not for him," Pearce said with a smile. "For the rest of the people using this space."

"The world needs more people like you in it," he said, and tipped his hat at her.

"Oh, I don't know about that," she said, but the man was already walking away.

To Spencer's mild surprise Pearce was blushing a little.

"Uh, it looks like you got a new admirer there," he teased, swallowing the annoyance he felt at how cute the smudge of colour in her cheeks made her look.

"Hey, I'll take what I can get," she replied.

Hadn't they had this conversation before? In another place and another time, when words came easier and not touching her didn't make his hands ache?

Spencer turned back to the diorama, trying to ignore the sensation of familiarity; Pearce turned her attention to the other side of the model, where a tiny Gretchen Ross had crashed her car. There was quiet again for a time, as both agents focused on the miniature world laid out in front of them. It was a peculiar viewpoint, like seeing the world from a hot air balloon, or through a fish eye lens. He wondered whether it wouldn't make sense if their unsub was a cable guy, seeing everything unfolding below him every day.

"Did you ever think about getting into this?"

He looked up, surprised that she had spoken to him. "Um… no, not really," he told her. "I mean, it's obviously very skilled, but –"

"But you'd have less time for reading," she finished, reading his mind.

He smiled and looked down. "Pretty much." After a pause, he glanced up at her again. "What about you, you ever get into modelling?"

She shot him a grin, mischief glinting in her eyes. "Well gee, Reid, I'm flattered."

He snorted. "You know what I meant."

"I do," she admitted lightly. "But it's just nice to see you smiling again."

Spencer met her gaze and found himself doing just that. He cleared his throat. "Um, you too, actually."

Her smile broadened and he looked down again, aware that he shouldn't let himself enjoy it too much. She had broken his trust in Vegas, after all – and besides, she had a girlfriend now.

"I used to wonder about it," she said, from across the diorama. "But I never had time."

"Yeah?" he asked, amused at the image of her painstakingly reproducing the rooms of Hogwarts Castle, or something. "I guess that makes sense – you do pay a lot of attention to detail."

"Curse of forensics." She grinned. "Yeah… I always wanted a dolls house when I was a kid, but I think it was something my mum wanted to do with me – build one, I mean. And then, when she died…" She trailed off, her expression softer than he had seen it in a while. "I think Dad just didn't want to face it."

"It must've been pretty tough for him," Spencer said, without thinking. "For both of you."

"Yeah," she said, frowning, and he winced.

He hadn't meant to upset her.

"Well, it's probably for the best," he said, and caught the confusion on her face out of the corner of his eye, pretending to focus on the model. "You woulda just made lots of tiny crime scenes, like this guy."

She laughed then, and it seemed to take her by surprise.

"You're probably right."

This time, the quiet was more companionable and less strained than it had been in months. Again, Pearce was the one to break it.

"By the way, do you still want that blanket you asked me to make for your mum?"

He gaped at her for a moment; he had completely forgotten it – a throwaway comment he'd made in another world, before all the chaos of Vegas had overtaken them. Surely she hadn't still made it?

"You don't have to –" he began, but she waved his comment away.

"I've already finished it," she said, and this time her smile held a lot less mischief and a little less power. Some of the guilt that had just hit him must have shown on his face, because she continued, "Don't worry about it. You know me, I love an excuse for a project."

 _Still,_ he thought, _doesn't make me feel less like I've taken advantage of you._

"Um… thanks," he said. "I'm sure she'll love it. Uh, how much do you want for it?"

"Nothing," said Pearce, pulling a face. "I enjoyed making it."

"Still," he insisted, having some notion of the cost of materials, but she shook her head.

"I'm going to warn you right now, I'm not going to let you pay me," she informed him, a hint of that _smile_ back again – the one that made his knees feel odd and his chest wobble a bit (or was that the other way around?). "And you know exactly how stubborn I can be."

Spencer tipped his head to one side thoughtfully. "And you know how stubborn I am," he reminded her. "So I'm warning _you_ that I'm going to spend the next couple weeks figuring out how to pay you back without you knowing about it."

That did it. Pearce snorted – loudly – making a couple of passing bureaucrats stare at her for a moment; both of them had to stifle their laughter. This wasn't really the time or place.

"Well, that's most of what we can do for today," said Hotch, joining them in that silent lurky way that he had.

Both of them jumped.

"Everything else is waiting on results coming in." He sighed. "Prentiss and Rossi called – there was a bus crash on the west side of Mount Scott, so the autopsy is held up."

As one, the three agents looked at the mountain on the diorama. After a moment they relaxed; there was no tiny bus and there were no tiny bodies.

"When will we hear?" Spencer asked.

"Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest." Hotch pinched the bridge of his nose. "Damn this weather," he grumbled. "I'm coming down with something."

"You need to take care of yourself, boss," said Pearce, not unkindly. "Can't be sick at Christmas, not while Jack's in charge."

He gave her a half-hearted glower that made Spencer have to pretend not to laugh.

Hotch shook his head at them both. "Let's call it night."

Pearce tutted. "Stop saying that."

Both men looked at her confused.

0o0

It was late in Clackamas County and snowing again.

Derek, Pearce and Reid were sitting in the bar of their hotel, watching the snow fall down outside. The rest of the party, almost as soon as dinner had finished, had headed upstairs to their rooms, leaving the three of them gathered around a table by the window, lost in their own thoughts.

For Derek, the snow always reminded him of home: of running the mile and a half to school with his friends, or snowball fighting in the back yard with his sisters. It would have made him quite homesick if he hadn't been heading back there for Christmas. A whole week with nothing to do but DIY for his mom, winding up Garcia (who always went home with him for the holiday, having no family of her own), teasing his sisters and eating far too much home-cooked food.

He could not wait.

Pearce, too, seemed to be remembering past joys in the snow. She was currently leaning her chin on her hand, nursing a hot chocolate and gazing out into the snowy night, looking unusually peaceful.

The odd one out was Reid, who didn't do so well in the snow when he was outside in it, given that he had grown up without it. It made him even clumsier than ever, though he wasn't opposed to fooling around in it if there wasn't an audience. Derek and Prentiss had managed to get him involved in a raucous snowball fight a few years before; he would have to get her to help him do it again. It would do the kid some good.

As unhappy he was outside in it in a professional capacity, the kid loved observing the phenomenon of the snow, same as Pearce. He was leaning against the window opposite her, watching enormous clumps of snowflakes drift lazily down through the milky pools the hotel uplighting created. Unusually, he had taken his contacts out before dinner, having spent too long staring at the diorama that his eyes had grown very tired (in his words: squiggly). It was odd to see him in his spectacles again – he hadn't worn them at work for a while.

Really, Derek thought, they ought to follow their colleagues' example and try to get some shut-eye, but it was tremendously relaxing just sitting here quietly with a couple of friends, watching the snow.

The travelling their job allowed them to do was something people in more static jobs could only dream of, and he was happy to indulge in it a little. There wasn't a whole lot they could do until the next batch of results and the autopsy came in, anyway. Really, if they didn't have serial killers to catch, it would have been quite pleasant.

Reid finished his drink and glanced at both of them before clearing his throat. "Um, so… do you think there'll be a new part of the model tomorrow?"

"Probably," said Pearce, not even looking away from the snow. "This guy's cycle is speeding up with each kill."

"He's gonna start devolving pretty soon," Morgan mused.

"It would be nice to catch him before that," Pearce remarked.

"Tch-yeah," Reid agreed. "And before he gets anymore ideas about expanding his model further."

"You know, the models kind of remind me of the Nutshell things that forensics matriarch made, early last century," Derek observed, and then stared at his co-workers in confusion as they both started to laugh.

It was friendly, companionable and entirely genuine, and if it wasn't for how puzzling a response it was to his statement, it would have been a joy to see.

"Sorry," said Pearce, with a lopsided grin. "We were talking about those earlier."

"Yeah," Reid added, with another glance in her direction. "I started lecturing Pearce about it before I realised they were a…" He smiled, amused. "Forensic favourite."

Derek chuckled. That was so Reid. "Imagine that," he teased, and Reid sent him a mock-glare.

"We were saying we both wanted to see them," said the kid. "But they're in a closed museum, so we can't."

Pearce agreed, tucking her feet up beneath her on the bench seat. "That would definitely be on my bucket list." She grinned as a thought occurred to her. "Hey, maybe we could convince Famous, Bestselling Author, the illustrious David Rossi to have a word with the museum – I bet they'd let him in."

Reid laughed and signalled to a passing member of bar staff. "Could I have another glass of the house red, please? You guys want anything?"

"Hey, if you're buying," said Pearce, to Derek's surprise. "I'll have a Jura."

Clearly the snow had put them both in a friendlier mood.

"You want ice?" the bar man asked, clearing Reid and Derek's empties (Pearce was still nursing her hot chocolate).

"No, it's cold enough, thanks."

"Morgan?" Reid offered.

"Sure – another of those, man," he said, pointing at the bottle the guy was holding. "Actually, the Nutshell models are still used for training by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer in Maryland," he said, when the man had gone. "We used to talk about it back when I was in Baltimore."

He grinned as both his friends' ears perked up at that.

"If they're open to training, would they take a few FBI agents from one of the Bureau's top departments?" Pearce suggested hopefully.

"I don't see what," said Reid, beaming.

"I bet the BAU could get us in – Hotch could make it a Christmas present," Morgan added.

"Well then, what do you say, boys?" Grace asked as their drinks appeared. "Grab Prentiss and head over on a road trip?"

"I will drink to that," said Derek, raising his glass.

"Hear, hear," said Reid, as the three of them clinked glasses.

Honestly, if the camaraderie could stay like this for a little while, Derek would happily wake up late in the morning and face down Hotch.


	18. Dog Whistle Politics

**Essential listening: Bad Blood, by Bear's Den**

 **0o0**

Grace rolled over under the heavy, comfortable duvet, enjoying that sleepy cosiness you only really got when it was cold outside and you weren't currently out in it, and felt on the nightstand for her phone. She got it on the third try, fully prepared to glare at the time, but it turned out she didn't need to – it was only seven minutes earlier than she'd set her alarm to go off.

She managed to answer the call just before Jordan gave up, goose bumps already forming on the skin of her outstretched arm.

"Morning Todd," she said, retreating entirely under the covers, phone and all. "Yeah – no don't worry, I was pretty much awake anyway. Sure." There was a pause; Grace opened her eyes again. "I'm sorry, he was what?"

Todd repeated her sentence wearily and Grace guessed that she had had to repeat it for everyone she had thus far roused.

"Oh, good grief. Right, yes – I'll be down in about quarter of an hour. The main lobby? Yeah."

She hung up and pushed the covers away, resigned to the rather sharp loss of heat that entailed, and spoke to the world at large. "I've really got to stop Hotch saying that."

0o0

"You know, it's not actually a curse," Emily remarked from the front seat, though her tone suggested it was amusing her no end to think it was.

Grace merely shrugged. In her experience anything could be a spell if someone wanted it to be hard enough and, while she didn't for one moment believe that Aaron Hotchner was inadvertently wishing death on this unsub's victims, it was always worth taking precautions if a coincidence like this popped up more than twice.

 _Except, of course,_ she reflected sadly, _that in our line of work there is always another victim._

They had spent a very frosty morning in the park, examining the fresh crime scene, canvassing the interested parties strolling through their usually relaxing green space – who were a little unnerved to discover a crime scene smack in the middle of it – and fending off the press, who had begun to put two and two together and make five.

Actually, Grace thought, that wasn't entirely fair. Those outlets that the mayor's office had contacted early on in the investigation were maintaining their promised of measured responses and official statements; it was the tabloid press, coming in from further afield now there had been three blatant murders in the space of a week, who were stirring up trouble. They appeared to be doing their level best to cause as much public panic as possible and already Todd was rushed off her feet trying to firefight their nonsense.

It was exhausting just watching her – and that was without all of the extra work another murder created.

Grace had spent her morning overseeing forensics, since their unsub was a stickler for detail, and when they'd first seen the body she and the coroner had met one another's gaze for a moment before trying to ensure the maximum privacy for their work. It wasn't a gory scene, as such, and as far as they could tell nothing was missing (in the way things had been from Dawn Harper's corpse, for example), but it had obviously been staged to have the maximum visual impact.

"He's getting bolder," she mused, to Reid, as they rode in the back of a Deputy's car. It had been all hands on deck that morning, and by the afternoon shift change people were spread out all over the place. Thankfully, the Deputy had been heading back towards the Town Hall and had offered them a lift so they could meet up with the rest of the team. "He moved Billy Townsend to a busy residential street to make his point, and this guy was just left in the middle of the dog park. You don't get much more public than that."

"Maybe he felt his message wasn't getting through," Reid speculated. "He's gone to all this trouble, but nobody's listening to him. Nothing's changing."

She nodded and he sighed. "At least we know Rod Edwards' crime against the decent folk of Sunnyside," he mused.

"Yeah," said Grace, pulling a face. "You know, I thought I had seen everything, but I think a little piece of me died this morning when I saw a man throttled to death with his own dog lead, tied to a bin, with a full bag of canine excrement shoved in his mouth."

She shuddered. It had elicited odd responses from her digestive system that she had thought were reserved for bad fire scenes and human cannibalism. Or anything involving nipples. She would not be eating today; Reid's expression suggested that neither would he.

"He's going out of his way to degrade his victims," Reid said, which Grace supposed was agreement. "Maybe even to the point of dehumanising them."

Grace thought about this for a moment, looking out at the houses they were passing, all decked out for Christmas. "No-o," she said slowly. "Not dehumanising – holding them accountable for their actions. Or, if he is trying to show them as dehumanised, he wants us to know they've done that to themselves. So he's distancing himself from the crime, making it all about their decisions."

"'It's not my fault I'm doing this, I'm just finishing what they started'," Reid remarked. "Classic house-cleaning behaviour. Just with an unusual victimology."

"And unusual communication and trophy taking," Grace added. "Did you find out what happened to Rod Edwards' dog, by the way?"

"No, they're still looking," Reid said. "I'd hate to think what the unsub might be doing to it. I – uh – suggested they looked in the local rescue centres and pound, though, since he's so community minded."

"Good shout," said Grace. "Of course, he might feel obligated to look after it himself."

"Let's hope not," said Reid. "If he dropped the dog off somewhere he might have left something of himself behind. Uh – that is, assuming the dog didn't see him murder his owner and take offence."

"Yeah."

They fell silent for a few minutes, trying not to think of what might have happened to the dog if it had.

"Maybe it'll show up on the model, somewhere. Did Rossi say why he wanted us all over there?" she asked, as they turned onto the high street; traffic was crawling at this time of day, particularly with the heavy snow.

"No." Reid frowned. "He said it was something we had to see for ourselves."

0o0

Twenty minutes later, they had their answer.

"I can see why you didn't want to explain it over the phone," Grace remarked, as the team clustered around the model.

Not only had Rod Edwards' unpleasant demise been immortalised in plastic and his dog (a sweet looking border collie) positioned outside a rescue centre in Happy Valley, there had been rather more new additions to the model than they had been expecting. Thirteen tiny figurines had been spotted around the diorama, in various parts of the region. Four of them were deputies, who could be seen canvassing houses in the streets around the crime scenes; one of them was obviously Detective Marr, who was standing outside the crime scene tape the unsub had added to Billy Townsend's murder scene; two of them were the officers guarding the model (who still hadn't seen anything); and the rest…

"This is so weird," said Prentiss as Reid crouched down beside her, frowning deeply and peering at a miniature version of himself, who was reading a map.

"I think it's safe to say that the unsub is aware of our presence," said Rossi.

"He seems to have a handle on where we are and what we're doin'," Morgan observed, recording a video of the tiny FBI agents for Garcia.

"Yeah," said Emily, scowling down at her smaller self, who – along with Rossi – was walking up to the miniature coroner's office.

Morgan's tiny representative was out on Ian Alvarez's street, talking to one of the man's neighbours as they did yard work; Hotch and Todd had joined the guards outside the Town Hall, both of whom (in a disturbingly comical nod to their current success rate) were wearing little blindfolds. Reid was outside the Clackamas County Police department with his map; the unsub had even drawn a tiny comfort zone on it.

All of them were wearing what looked like their usual clothes, helpfully labelled with tiny FBI stab vests. It was downright unsettling.

There was one conspicuous absence, and Grace wasn't sure that she liked where the unsub was going with that. Trying not to get ahead of herself, she took another look at the places she had visited during the investigation; perhaps she had simply missed it.

 _Or perhaps he has business with me,_ she mused.

"He's taunting us," said Todd, an uncharacteristically ugly expression on her face.

"Maybe," said Rossi. "Maybe not."

Emily stared at the older agent in disbelief. "I don't know, it looks like a taunt to me."

"The miniatures of the guards are, no question," said Rossi. "But none of the others – either us or the locals – are represented in any kind of danger, or in a humiliating situation."

"He's letting us know he knows all about us," Morgan mused.

Rossi nodded. "He's saying 'hello'."

"His confidence is definitely growing," Emily observed, straightening up. "It must have taken a long time for him to put these figures in place – not to mention the scene in the park."

"And the guards still didn't see anything?" Hotch asked.

Morgan, who – along with Rossi – had got there earliest, shook his head. "Shift change – and that's takin' longer because of the snow."

"Which the unsub is aware of," Grace mused.

"Guys, this map is pretty accurate to the way I marked it up," said Reid, who had a magnifying glass to his figurine now. "The only way he could know about the geographic profile is if he's physically seen it, so he has to have been in the Police Department in the last couple of days."

"And we're not in the public part," said Prentiss, after they took a moment to digest that. "He'd have to have come right into the offices at the back."

"Call Garcia," said Hotch, to Morgan, who had his phone out already.

"He's been watching us the whole time we were here," said Reid, sounding annoyed.

Really, he was right. If the unsub had been that close to them they really should have spotted him. How close had he been to their investigation?

They would have to tread carefully from now on.

"Hey Babygirl, I'mma put you on speaker," said Morgan.

" _What up, homies?"_ she asked.

"On speaker and in public, Garcia," said Prentiss, with tolerant amusement.

Morgan's cell phone made a noise of discontent. _"Urgh, fine. What do you need?"_

"Do you have those records of blue collar workers at Clackamas County City Hall?" Rossi asked.

" _Nada, apparently they had a problem with a virus last month and it's taking some time to get things back in order,"_ she grouched. _"I even broke through the firewall to check if I could help recover them, but it's a no go. Their server went caput. All their records should be on paper, though, where you guys are."_

Hotch gave met Reid's gaze and the younger agent immediately took off towards the front desk.

"We're on it," said Morgan. "What about janitorial or maintenance at the Police Department?"

" _Police Department?"_ Garcia asked. _"Wait – wait – you guys have a mole? Oh, that is so not a thing I like! Nobody's allowed to spy on my babies but me!"_

"Garcia," said Hotch gently.

" _Right, right. Work first, worry later, I know,"_ she said, typing furiously. _"Although you know, as the technical goddess I am, I can technically do both at the same time. And look fabulous doing it. Okay, I got them."_

"Police Department employment records should have a full background check," said Emily. "Do any of them note that they work at the City Hall as well?"

" _That would be a…"_

There was a pause; six agents hung on it. As was so often the case, everything could ride on Garcia's next words.

" _Damn! That would be a big, sucky 'no',"_ she said. _"Almost all of them have second jobs, but none that would put them at City Hall, or give them the kind of access they would need for this level of personal knowledge of the victims."_

Everybody groaned. It had felt like they were so close.

"Garcia," said Grace thoughtfully. "You said City Hall farmed stuff out to external companies – do the Police Department do the same?"

" _Oh, I like the way you think, compadre, on it. This will take a little time – I'll hit you back when I have something!"_

"Alright, he's got eyes on us and we don't have eyes on him," said Hotch, when she hung up. "Which means we've probably all seen or spoken to him. Now, I don't want –"

But they didn't find out what he didn't want, because at that moment someone in one of the offices upstairs started screaming. The effect was instantaneous: as the civil servants and members of the general public turned to stare in the direction of the sound, all six agents clustered around the diorama sprang into action, holding up guns and badges, and sprinting towards the source of the awful sound.

There was the bang of a door opening at speed behind them as they reached the bottom of the wide staircase and suddenly Reid – who had been in a back room – was level with Grace, bringing up the rear.

They followed the screams along a corridor leading deeper into the building. People were opening the doors of their offices and sticking their heads out to see what the commotion was, Mayor Halliday among them.

"What's going –" she managed, before Todd cut her off.

"Ma'am, we're going to need you to stay where you are, please," she said, slowing down. As she passed them, she heard Todd continue in a quieter but authoritative voice: "Help me keep these people calm and in their offices."

"I – alright…"

Behind them, Mayor Halliday and Todd started clearing the hallway as the team surrounded the door at the end of the corridor, which was ajar. It was good to know they had their backs. The screaming had stopped, which was somehow worse.

Prentiss nodded at Morgan, who kicked the door open, gun up. The team followed, ready for anything.

Inside, a young woman – probably at City Hall as an intern, or on work experience, given her age – was backed against the window, her shaking hands pressed to her mouth. She was staring, eyes wide with horror, at the woman seated behind the desk. She had her back to the door, but from the unnatural angle of her neck, she was obviously dead.

"Alright, ma'am, I'm going to need you to come with me," said Rossi gently, as the agents lowered their guns. He led the trembling young woman out of the room as the rest of the team got a better look at their next victim.

She was dressed neatly, and her desk declared her to be Councillor Nancy Wu; above her was a certificate stating her prominent role in fundraising. There had obviously not been much of a struggle, given that nothing on her looked disturbed, save the angle of her neck and her bulging eyes – and her mouth.

"This guy really has a thing for mouths," Morgan observed drily.

"The source of both truth and lies," Reid mused, as Prentiss checked the woman's pulse – just in case – and Hotch called Detective Marr to start the process of scene preservation. "Suffocation, do you think?" he asked, indicating the eyes and the petechial haemorrhaging in evidence around them.

Grace nodded, silently, her eyes travelling from the half-drunk cup of green tea beside Councillor, to the large number of coins someone had stuffed down her throat, to the certificate on the wall.

"A lie could cost you everything," she murmured, and turned on her heel as Reid and Morgan began speculating about sedatives.

She passed Rossi and the young intern in the corridor, currently being comforted by Mayor Halliday.

"Now, Donna – I know this is difficult, but Agent Rossi here needs to ask you a couple of questions, is that okay?"

"I – I guess so. Mayor Halliday, would it be okay if someone called my mom? She worries –"

"I'll do it myself."

Todd and the plain-clothes guard who had been lurking in the lobby were corralling interested and worried civil servants at the end of the hall; Grace pushed through them, using her badge as a shield.

"What's going on?"

"Has anyone seen Nancy?"

"Is Donna okay?"

"I'm going to need you all to stay calm out here –"

Grace paused at the top of the stairs, her eyes on the man standing beside the diorama. In all the chaos of the last few minutes, no one was paying any attention to the model at all. There was no one else on the lower level at all. She started down the staircase as he walked towards the front doors, not too quickly, not too slowly; certainly not like a man who had a reason to flee. He was the only person in the whole building completely unconcerned by the ruckus above them.

He was wearing the same clothes she had seen him in before – average, everyday clothes that no one would spare a second glance for. She paused by the diorama. Sure enough, Councillor Wu's body had been added to the tableau outside the City Hall, her desk and chair right under the noses of the two blindfolded guards.

Her quarry was at the door now. Grace followed him out onto the street as several police vehicles screamed into view. She and the unsub both ignored them. He passed by several running officers without a single one giving him a backward glance – the ultimate everyman in his drab coat and hat. Someone your eyes just slid over. Aware that she had to keep him in sight, Grace made a complicated sign in the air with her hand and the officers ran past her, too, as if she simply wasn't there.

As he crossed the road ahead, the man glanced back at her.

 _So, he knows I'm here, she thought,_ tensing for a moment.

Her hand grazed the handle of her firearm, but the man ahead of her simply smiled slightly and carried on, fully aware that she was following him.

 _Well, it looks like he does have business with me, after all,_ she thought, and stepped into the road after him.


	19. Unfinished Business

**Essential Listening: The Fire, by Reel Big Fish**

0o0

Grace stood beside the door of the diner Billy Townsend used to work at, looking thoughtfully through the window at a middle-aged African American man who was sitting at the lunch counter, exchanging pleasantries with the waitress. In deference to the fact he was inside, he had removed his hat and coat. He looked completely innocuous, like any other diner in the restaurant.

Really, she ought to call for back-up. Not only was it against FBI procedure, but Hotch had obviously been about to say that they shouldn't go off on their own – even if he hadn't managed to get to the end of the sentence. And he was right. The man had obviously known she was following him, and he knew she was FBI. This was blatantly a trap – if she went inside the diner, she would be playing his game; she'd become a part of whatever his endgame was.

But then, she had already known that, when hers was the only figurine missing from the diorama. She had still chosen to follow him.

The ghost of a smile travelled across her lips. It wasn't in her to not follow, when a call came through, which was a problem her old DCI had often had cause to complain about. Hotch less so; she had thought she had grown out of this kind of thing, but perhaps it was more accurate to say that with a tightly bonded, high profile unit like hers there was no room for unnecessary heroics. They kept each other from their own stupidity as best they could.

Yes, she should wait for back-up.

She pulled out her phone and texted Hotch. Trusting in the fact that he would be too caught up in the mess over at City Hall to check it immediately, she said simply: _Checking out a suspect at the diner on Main Street._

She pushed the door open, thinking that the last thing they needed was a hostage situation. The bell above the door jangled merrily and the waitress looked up from clearing a table. She gave Grace a tight smile that told her she was yet to recover from her young friend's death, but that they were carrying on as normally as they could in his honour.

"Afternoon," she said, taking in the positions of each of the seven other diners and the booth at the end of the row, which was stacked high with candles and flowers. A tribute to Billy, undoubtedly.

"Take a seat – I'll be right over," said the waitress, and Grace gave her a smile.

No use worrying people. Panic did unfortunate things to people on good days; she didn't like to speculate what might happen if the patrons figured out the man who had murdered their friend was in their midst. Or, realistically, what he might do to them.

The unsub met her gaze and smiled gently; Grace took a seat beside him.

"What's good here?" she asked him and his smile widened.

"The apple pie is particularly fine, I think you'll find." He gestured at his own slice.

"Thanks. I'll have a slice of pie and a tea, I think," she said to the waitress, who smiled and nodded, and went about her work.

"I'm William," said the unsub, extending a hand. "I saw you in City Hall yesterday."

Grace shook it. "That's right," she said. "Spent a lot of time there, this last week. Just William? Like the books?"

He laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, Grace thought, that ought to belong to someone's doting grandfather, rather than someone who throttled men to death for not picking up dog muck.

"It's been a while since I read those," he admitted. "William Beadle."

"Nice to meet you, William. I'm Grace, Grace Pearce."

"What a beautiful name. It's a pleasure to meet you too, Agent Pearce."

 _Good,_ thought Grace. _No pretending why we're here, at least._

Her pie arrived, along with a steaming mug of reasonably brewed tea, and she thanked the waitress, who started reorganising the refrigerator further up the counter.

"You're a long way from home," he remarked, as they ate their pie.

He was right: it was particularly fine. It reminded her of the Swedish apple cake one of her fellow students on the MSc Forensics course had made for their weekly meetings.

"Depends on where you think home is," said Grace. "I had nothing keeping me in London anymore, but I do have a home here."

"With your team?"

"They're really more like a family," she told him. "So, we fall out from time to time, but we'd do anything for each other."

"Ah, I know how that is," said William, nodding. "I've never left Oregon, you know. Hardly been outside Clackamas County my whole life."

"You must love it here," she observed, "to stay so close to home for so long."

"Oh, I do, I do," he assured her. "I love Mount Scott, I love Happy Valley – I was born here. I expect I'll die here, too. What made you leave England?"

Grace put down her fork and thought for a moment. He appeared to be being honest with her – and what was it Rossi always said?

 _The predators we chase make the finest profilers._

This one had spotted minor hypocrisies throughout his community – he would know if she were lying.

"My son was murdered," she said quietly, and gave him a sad smile. "And my father's dementia killed him outright. I lost almost everything and staying in that world, with all those people watching my every move, waiting for the next tragedy – it was suffocating. So I left."

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, with genuine concern.

"Thank you."

"How old was he? Your little boy."

"Not even one," she said. "Young enough that I don't even have a photograph."

 _The truth, but none of the detail._

"I'm sorry," said William. "I imagine there is no pain in this world like the loss of a child."

She shook her head and picked up her fork again to resume eating. William did the same.

"You could say the same thing for Billy Townsend's father," she remarked, after a moment.

William put down his cup. "Yes. Yes, I suppose you could. He's a hardworking man, Thomas Townsend. It is a shame about his son."

"From what I hear, Billy was hardworking, too," Grace observed, taking another bite of her pie. "He certainly seems to have been popular around here."

Her eyes went to the booth in the corner, packed to bursting with floral and handmade tributes; his murderer looked, too, and sighed.

"Yes, he was hardworking," he conceded. "And a friendly, polite boy. It was a shame. If only he hadn't broken his word, I could have left him alone. I spoke to him, you know," he added, turning back to her. "Several times over the last few weeks, tried to encourage him to keep to his vow – or at least remove the ring and publically admit what he and his girlfriend were up to, but he refused."

"They were engaged to be married," she said, and William raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't know that," he admitted.

"Would it have altered your decision?"

"To make an example of him?" He shook his head. "Well, it would have given me pause, but no. He was a liar, cheating the system, the same as all the others."

"How did you know they were carrying on?" Grace asked, burying the flicker of rage she heard at someone's life being snuffed out for so flimsy a reason.

"About their trysts, you mean?" William asked, taking a sip of coffee. "I eat here every day, Agent Pearce. Often alone. I overhear a lot of conversations." He nodded at the booth next to Billy's. "Dawn Harper and her friends from work ate there on Tuesdays – you should have heard the things that girl would say about people. Really, it was as if she couldn't stop herself from gossiping."

"Not a problem anymore," Grace remarked.

"Exactly," said William, as if that excused murder. "Behaviour like that just shouldn't be countenanced." He smiled at her. "Really, it's amazing what you can find out, just sitting at a counter."

Grace returned the smile, marvelling at the man's level of delusion. "That's true."

There was quiet for a minute or so, as they both applied themselves to their pies.

"Ian Alvarez?" Grace asked, eventually, aware that they would need a full confession if they wanted to be sure he was the murderer and not just a modeller with a grim sense of humour.

"Oh, well, everyone knew what _he_ was up to," he said. "That may have been the worst kept secret in Clackamas County." He chuckled, then frowned. "Though I do feel for Rosa and the little ones having to sit beside him in the hospital for so long. I was hoping it would be quick, you see, for his family's sake. The short sharp shock, like ripping off a band-aid."

"But they're better off without him?" Grace asked.

"Oh, absolutely," said William, without hesitation. "Just imagine what it would have been like for them, growing up and knowing what he was up to! It hardly bears thinking about."

Grace nodded, gently prodding for more information, until he had described how he had found out about each of the victims' indiscretions by simply eavesdropping on them in the diner. As he was telling her exactly how he had tricked, incapacitated and throttled Rod Edwards in the dog park that morning, Grace looked up to find the waitress on the opposite side of the counter, an expression of suppressed horror on her face.

She met Grace's eyes, and the agent saw the fear there. "Could I have the bill, please?" Grace asked, sliding her badge nonchalantly across the counter. Somehow, she managed to indicate through body language and eye signals that the woman ought to very quietly usher the other diners outside.

"And Nancy Wu?" Grace asked, as the waitress slowly made her way to the nearest table of customers and spoke very quietly to them.

She heard the sound of them getting to their feet in a state of exaggerated calm and thanked her lucky stars that the waitress was a sensible, unflappable sort.

"Oh, she was one of the absolute worst," said William, after another mouthful of coffee. "You should have heard her, Agent Pearce – the way she went on and on to her friend about her new car, and expensive holidays. With the way the local councillors are paid, there's no way she got those things honestly." He scoffed. "I can only imagine she didn't think anyone would care."

"Hmm," said Grace, and changed the subject. "I must say, your ability to alter the diorama without anyone noticing is quite impressive."

"Thank you," he said graciously. "I'm rather lucky in that respect, I suppose. Nobody ever sees me, you know, and I'm always there. People just don't see a man fixing something, minding his own business. It's expected. It's as if they simply forget I'm there."

"Like Miss Marple," Grace suggested.

William laughed. "Yes! Exactly like that." He grinned, and his smile was unnervingly pleasant. "I haven't read Agatha Christie in years. I should like to get back into reading."

"She's one of my favourites."

"That doesn't surprise me at all." He chuckled.

Grace studied his face for a moment. There was nothing in his body language or expression that suggested anything other than an ordinary, nice man, simply expressing his opinion of detective fiction. If she hadn't just spent the past half hour listening to his confession, she could quite easily have dismissed him as entirely non-threatening.

 _No wonder he could get away with murder,_ she thought. _None of them would ever have seen it coming. And under that sweet exterior, he's completely unhinged._

It would be a mistake to underestimate him, though, she knew, just because he appeared so genial. She hadn't missed his earlier comment about expecting to die in the area and she wasn't about to give him the opportunity.

"I have to ask," she said apologetically. "Coach Fowler." She paused as William Beadle's expression darkened. "His death was quite different to the others."

"Yes," he said.

When Grace realised no further information would be forthcoming, she pressed him. "Why?"

William sighed. "I told you that people forget about me?" he said and she nodded, drinking her tea. "Well, it hasn't always been such a boon, Agent Pearce. I have been passed over and overlooked my whole life. I don't mind," he said, though Grace knew from the increasing level of violence in his kills that he did, even if he didn't want to admit it. "But it's hard sometimes.

"That man…" His frown deepened into something a lot uglier. "That man wasn't playing fair. He was putting his favourites on all the good spots on the team and stopping the kids he didn't like from playing. My great-nephew, Alexander, he's a good baseball player – may I show you a picture?"

Grace tensed. On the one hand, allowing a confessed serial killer to reach into his pocket was not the kind of move that would ensure a long and happy life; on the other, he seemed content simply to talk to her, for the moment.

Besides, she was armed.

"Sure," she said, watching him out of the corner of her eye in case he had a weapon, or tried to hit her in the head.

Fortunately, he did neither. He passed her his wallet, open at a photograph of a smiling teenager.

"Handsome chap," she remarked and William beamed.

"He most certainly is," he said, putting the wallet away. "You know, he looks a lot like I did at his age," he added, with a hint of mischief.

Grace smiled. "I don't doubt it."

He chuckled. "You're quite the diplomat, Agent Pearce." He sighed, looking down for a moment. "Coach Fowler took against him from the day he tried out for the team, always putting him down, keeping him on the bench, taunting him. He made him a laughing stock at first – and then he just pretended to forget about him."

William shook his head. "I may have made my peace with being forgotten, Agent Pearce, but I wasn't about to let it happen to Alexander. He's got his whole life ahead of him. It was making him miserable – his grades were slipping. I had to do something. So, I went to see the coach, to reason with him. I just wanted to talk to him."

He fell silent and when he spoke again, Grace could hear a flicker of the anger that had driven him to brutally murder nine of his neighbours. "At first he didn't even seem to recognise the name. When I reminded him, he called Alexander a waste of space. Said he'd never amount to anything. As you said yourself, family is important. I… I couldn't have that."

"No," said Grace. "I suppose you couldn't."

"The bats were just lying there," said Beadle. "And when it was over, it just seemed so – so right, you know? That he should be made an example of – and in a manner that would make him a laughing stock. The replacement coach is much better."

Grace nodded thoughtfully. "And the models?" she asked.

"Oh, I've been making those for years," he said. "I made a dolls house for my niece when she was little and I enjoyed it so much I just kept on. Adding to the diorama seemed appropriate, given the scale of the problem I was illustrating."

"The lack of common decency," said Grace.

"Exactly." William gave her a gentle smile. "You know, Agent Pearce, it has been a real pleasure to have someone to converse with on an equal level. Someone to share the joke with. People who really understand what it is I'm trying to do."

She guessed he meant the team. "Well, we do our best," she said.

"Yes," he agreed. "That's just the point. So many people fall short of that." He smiled again. "Not you, though. It was a great deal of fun to model someone I actually liked for a change. The jackets were a little challenging to get right, however." He put his head to one side, observing her. "You're an unusual person in this day and age. I knew that the first time I saw you. There is something about you, Agent Pearce. I do believe you and I are kindred spirits."

"I'm flattered," she remarked, not without irony – though he seemed to miss it.

"Your comment about common courtesy, for example," he reminded her. "And taking care of that man's litter."

"I agree that there's a lack of care in today's society," she admitted. "But I have to say, I wouldn't have murdered anyone to try to solve it."

William nodded in an abstracted sort of way. "Well, that's certainly one point of view. Perhaps that's something we'll just have to agree to disagree on."

"I think it might be, Mr Beadle." She finished her tea. "You realise I'm going to have to arrest you, now."

William nodded. "Of course," he said at once. "I have broken the law."

She got to her feet, noting that there was no one left in the diner, and cuffed him. He didn't make a single move to resist.

Good, she thought, and caught herself wishing that a few more of their murderers were this compliant.

"You're very welcome, my dear."

She glanced outside. "I think we'll walk to the station," she said. "It's not far. Am I going to have to worry about you?"

"No, no. I'll come quietly, as they put it on the TV shows." Before she put his coat over his shoulders, he touched her wrist – even with his hands behind his back. "For you," he said, dropping something into her hand.

"Thank you, Mr Beadle. Shall we?"

She led him to the door and out onto the street. The waitress and the patrons of the diner were huddled around the far end of the car park, looking frightened. Grace waved them back inside.

"I'd appreciate it if you waited for an officer to arrive," she told them. "They will want to take statements."

"Is he really a murderer?" one woman asked, and William treated her to a peaceful smile.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait for an official statement from the Police Department," said Grace, and led her charge out onto the pavement before anyone else could get inquisitive.

They chatted lightly, as they went, looking for all the world like a young woman lending her arm to an older gentleman for support – rather than keeping a firm grip on him. He might have been 'coming quietly', as he had put it, but Grace felt that was no reason to relax her guard. Her vigilance, it turned out, was not unfounded.

It came out of nowhere. At a point roughly halfway between the diner and the Police Department, in the middle of a discussion about how deep the snow had been on this street when William was a child, he shoved her, with tremendous force, out into the street, her momentum and her grip on his arm carrying them both into the path of an oncoming car. It was travelling far too fast, and with the streets covered in slush, it would never have a chance to brake on time. She saw the driver's eyes widen as he realised what was about to happen.

Grace barely had time to blink.

0o0

Aaron strode down the snowy street, feeling oddly perturbed.

It wasn't like Pearce to go off on her own without checking in, unless it was related to the kind of thing he didn't like to put in his reports in case someone higher up the chain of command decided he was insane. Particularly not without waiting for the nod; and to let him know where she was going with nothing more than a text message…

And since when did they even have a suspect to check out?

No.

Something was definitely up with her.

Morgan had been trying not to tell him that the day before, when she had been unusually sarcastic in the debrief following the discovery of Billy Townsend's body. Both Prentiss and Reid had shot uncertain looks in her direction, suggesting there was more to it than a little misplaced tiredness. None of them would tell him what it was, of course; that wasn't how they functioned. He only ever found things out when they got really serious, mostly because he made sure he diplomatically ignored things that weren't.

He turned onto Main Street and was about to head left, towards the diner, when he saw her, quietly and deliberately leading a man who looked very much like he fit their profile in the direction of the Police Department.

Aaron looked more closely. Although they seemed to be conversing quote amicably, the man's arms were behind his back, but under his coat. It was an unmistakeable silhouette for a seasoned FBI agent: he was handcuffed. But Grace hadn't called it in. She hadn't made contact since pulling her vanishing act from City Hall.

"What –" he began, quite prepared to jaywalk his way over the road, when the man she was escorting shoved her hard, putting them both directly into the path of a car travelling full speed down the slushy street. Aaron's breath caught in his throat.

He watched, helpless, as his friend turned to see the car that was about to flatten both her and the not-so-unsub. He tried to call out, but he couldn't seem to make a sound. One of his team was going to die, right here, right now – right in front of him – and there wasn't a single thing he could do to change that.

Reacting purely on instinct – or so it seemed to him – Pearce put out the arm that wasn't holding William Beadle, fingers splayed wide, as if she were trying to stop it through sheer force of will – but that was impossible. In slow motion, Aaron watched as she glared directly at the advancing car; it was almost upon them when she lifted her hand and eyes high above her head.

Aaron blinked in disbelief.

The car burst into a thousand pieces, spinning out around Pearce and the unsub. The driver flew above their heads, tumbling through the air with an astonished expression on his face, apparently in his own, personal bubble that protected him from scattering nuts, bolts and fragments of windshield. Grace's eyes didn't leave the driver for a moment as her gaze and arm swung back down behind her, controlling his descent. The fragments of metal and glass coalesced around the driver and suddenly, with gut wrenching-abruptness, the car was just a car again, travelling along the road.

It swerved, skidding on the slush and span to a halt safely a hundred feet or so ahead of them.

Aaron's mouth fell open. Frozen to the spot, he gaped as Pearce pushed the unsub back onto the pavement and carried on as if nothing had happened, ignoring the few pedestrians who were staring at what should have been a fatal accident.

For a few moments – far longer than it had taken for the car to deconstruct and come back together – all he could do was watch his agent walk further up the street, the unsub beside her entirely unresisting; then his training kicked in.

Slowly, feeling as if he were moving through a dream, Aaron crossed the road. Already, the people he passed were shaking their heads and telling themselves that the car had simply skidded. He reached the car and helped the stunned and wobbly driver out of the front seat, letting him lean against the side of his car.

Aaron ran his eyes over it as the man sputtered and shook, trying to form a sentence. It seemed perfectly intact, like it was a perfectly ordinary car that nothing unusual had ever happened to. The driver, too, seemed unhurt, apart from a bad case of shock.

"Are you alright?" Aaron heard himself say, through the bubble of shock he himself was fighting. "What happened?"

"That man pushed that woman into the road," he said, and then blinked, looking frantically around for a moment. "Where is she? I thought… But that can't – I mean she would have – I couldn't have – I thought I – it's… it's impossible," he stammered. "No… No, I must have just skidded on black ice and then imagined…"

"I'll call an ambulance!" someone called from behind them.

"Man, did you _see_ that? That was a bad skid," someone else remarked.

"Are you okay?"

Frowning, Aaron looked around at the good people of Clackamas County hurrying to the driver's aid and watched as their internal sanity filter erased what they had just seen from the realms of possibility. He could actually see it happen, the moment when their expressions shifted by a tiny fraction and their mental universes righted themselves.

Of course cars couldn't burst around random people in the street and then reform without a scratch on the other side. That was preposterous, like something out of science-fiction.

He narrowed his eyes, conscious that his mind was trying to do the same for him, scarring over the simply impossible and replacing it with a much more likely set of events, forming a sort of safeguard; a false memory. A little white lie that would let him carry on living and working in a world that made sense, where one of the junior members of his team wasn't…

Wasn't something that he was currently struggling to define.

But then, these people had probably never asked their colleague to show them the ghost of a recently dead murder victim, nor had to relay a particularly disturbing question about the undead through her to a coroner in London, nor lent her out to otherwise sensible Sheriffs who believed she was psychic. In that poor woman's bedroom back in Ohio, when he had seen her spectre, he had trusted his own senses so completely that it had hurt – and again, in the house where the Angel Maker's spirit apparently resided (along with his mortal remains), he had read from Pearce's body language exactly where in the room it was. He hadn't even thought to question whether it was really there, though he had spent his whole life entirely sure that the paranormal was inherently ridiculous. And, sitting outside the house in a Bureau SUV in the dead of night, he had believed absolutely that he shouldn't interrupt whatever was going on inside that house, no matter what logic or reason told him.

It was insane. It didn't make sense. It…

 _It happened,_ he thought, with sudden clarity. _It happened just the way I think it did, even though that is impossible. I just watched a woman I have worked with for three years perform an extraordinary feat of magic as if this is the sort of thing she does all the time, and it definitely happened. It had tangible, real world consequences that cannot be ignored._

 _Which means that when I asked Pearce if there was anything to the rumours about her old team, and when I asked if she was keeping anything about her abilities back, she lied. On multiple occasions, in fact._

Aaron shook his head as if to clear it and turned in time to see Pearce pilot her charge into the parking lot of the Clackamas County Police Department.

Now, what in the hell was he supposed to do about that?


	20. The Public Trust

**Essential listening: I Wish I Knew How it Feels to be Free, by Nina Simone**

0o0

Her heart still feeling like it was beating at about a million miles an hour, Grace steered an extremely compliant William Beadle into the Clackamas County Police Department and up to the reception desk.

"One to book in, please," she said, flashing her badge.

"Sure," said the officer on the desk, shooting the murderer a surprised expression. "Name?"

"William Beadle," said Grace.

The man beside her nodded and smiled. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, officer."

"O-kay…" said the officer, glancing between them and recording this in his database. "Crime?"

"Murder. Nine counts," said Grace, matter-of-factly. "Interfering with a body, eight counts. Public vandalism, too, but that will depend on what City Hall decides."

The officer dropped the pen he was holding and openly gaped at her. " _Him?_ "

"Yep," said Grace. "I have a full confession."

The officer stared at her for a few moments, perhaps taking in her I'm-not-kidding expression, and nodded. "Alright. I'm gonna need to call the lead detective on the case, but we can process him while we wait."

"Detective Leah Marr. I imagine she's currently at City Hall," said Grace helpfully, as the duty sergeant ushered over a couple of uniformed officers to search and contain Beadle. "You'll be happy to tell her and the other officers what you've told me, won't you, William?" she added, not wanting any more surprises.

"Oh, yes, Agent Pearce," he said pleasantly. "I believe in honesty."

"That's what I thought."

It took about fifteen minutes to book William Beadle in, and another five to settle him in his cell, where he bid Grace a gracious farewell and thanked her for her time. By the time she got back to booking, an astonished but excited Detective Marr was waiting for her.

"I heard you got him," she said, looking relieved.

"Yes," said Grace.

"He doesn't look like a serial killer," said one of the uniformed officers. He scurried away under Grace's gaze.

"That's how we profiled him," she said. "Mr Anonymous. That's how he got away with it so many times. None of them would ever have seen him coming."

"Sergeant Richards tells me you have a full confession?" the Detective asked.

Grace simply smiled and pulled out a tiny model she had slipped into her pocket when she'd arrested Beadle. It was a tiny FBI agent with blond, unruly hair arresting a grey-haired African American male in a tan coloured greatcoat and a flat cap. She dropped it in the Detective's hand.

"He gave me this," she said. "I imagine he'll be delighted to tell you all about his campaign for honesty and social conscience."

"Holy…" The detective stared at the thing in her hand. "He knew you were coming to arrest him. How?"

Grace shrugged. That had been bothering her, too – but perhaps their interaction from the day before, about the trash dropped by an irreverent resident, had been sufficient for him to single her out.

"I think maybe he wanted to stop hurting people," she said, "one way or another. He's perfectly lucid and he knows what he's done is against the law, but he also believes it was the right thing to do."

"He's nuts," said the detective, carefully putting the model back into the evidence bag Grace had slipped it into in the diner.

"Oh, undoubtedly," said Grace. "Er – I realise you're going to need me to write a full report, but would you mind if I slipped off to the ladies room for a moment?"

"Of course not," said the detective, and pointed along the corridor behind the desk. "I'll call your team and update them."

"Thanks," said Grace. "Things happened a bit too quickly to keep them in the loop."

"Ain't that always the way?" the sergeant put in, earning himself a couple of chuckles.

With strong steps belying the dregs of adrenaline sapping the energy from her bloodstream, Grace headed along the corridor until she was out of sight of the front desk, before changing direction and heading for the fire escape that led to the roof. As was the case with most law enforcement buildings, several someones obviously used this as a private smoking area, so there was no alarm to trip, and no doors swinging back and locking to worry about. Climbing the stairs, it felt as if there was a thick layer of glue on the soles of her winter boots, making it hard to keep going.

She reached the roof and took a couple of strides out onto it before her legs buckled and she fell to her knees on the snow. Ignoring the cold and the wet, she stayed where she was, looking out over the frozen town and up towards the mountain. Weak with the shock of what had almost happened, she giggled to herself, profoundly glad that none of the rest of her team had been around to witness that particular display.

There had barely been time for her to think, and she was reasonably sure that if she hadn't had magic, she would have been a goner. It had been pure instinct that had kept her alive, and while she didn't like to use in such a big way as that (on the main street of a busy town, no less), she was aware that most of the time, people edited out the things they simply didn't believe in. Besides, it wasn't like she'd had much of a choice.

 _I wonder if he'd have tried anything if I'd had someone with me,_ she thought, then dismissed the idea. He'd wanted to die in Clackamas County – he would still have done it, and she wouldn't have been able to hide her magic if she or anyone else from her team had been in danger.

 _Better all round, really,_ she decided, then smiled.

For all the risks, it had felt good not to have to hold back for a change. And everyone had come out of it alive – just.

She cast her eyes up at the frosty, blue sky and laughed, feeling strangely alive. She hadn't felt like this for far too long. Not since before losing Michael. Apparently, nearly dying was what it took to properly wake her up again. The image of her son that she had cultivated in her imagination – bright and precocious at four years old, with a blonde mop of hair and red wellies – fleetingly sprang to mind. In her mind's eye, he wagged a censorial finger at her.

 _That was a close one, baby._

0o0

"Three pair!"

"Son of a bitch!" Morgan exclaimed, throwing down his cards. "It's bad enough the kid does this to me, but you as well, Emily?"

"You've just gotta get better at cards, Derek," said Prentiss, smiling sweetly at her friend and claiming all the snacks on the table for her own.

"Yeah, _Derek_ ," Todd teased. "Maybe you shouldn't play if the stakes are too high for you?"

Rossi, who was sitting across from her, chuckled as Morgan narrowed his eyes at the media liaison.

"Oh, it's _on_ ," said Morgan. "Just know that paybacks are a bitch."

"Even at Christmas?" Todd asked.

"Especially at Christmas!"

Pearce, who was sitting across the aisle from the table, rolled her eyes. "Shut up and deal, Morgan."

"Yeah, man," Reid goaded, beside her, "where's your holiday spirit?"

"Bah humbug," Morgan grumbled, but he started dealing anyway.

Ordinarily, the sight of the majority of his team getting along and de-stressing on the way home from a tough case would have been a cause for celebration. Aaron might even have joined them, if he hadn't had other things on his mind.

Impossible things.

It wasn't that Pearce had skills that wouldn't have been out of place in his son's comic books, or even that she had broken the laws of physics, right in front of him. It wasn't even that she had ignored her training and her better judgement and gone off on her own, putting herself at risk – though he had to admit that that irked him.

No, the problem he was having, as his team-mates argued amiably over their cards, was that she had broken his trust. And not just once, if the focussed way she had made that car do the thing it had (he still couldn't find a way to adequately describe it, even now) was anything to go by. She had wilfully lied to him about the scale of her abilities on at least three occasions; abilities that could pose a risk to the rest of the team, in the wrong circumstances.

 _I mean, what if she loses her temper?_ Aaron thought, and frowned, remembering the way she always tried to regulate her negative feelings. Was that why she had been sent to have anger management training? Or did she request it? Was that another lie?

It was like there was a whole other side to the woman that the team knew nothing about. A side that worried him.

How had Pearce described herself back in London? _Arrogant, ambitious, quick, meticulous, impatient, troublesome and smug. A temper and a readiness to act upon it. A blunt, uncompromising copper who took no prisoners and didn't make many friends._

At the time, he had claimed not to recognise those qualities in her personality, but he had realised since that this wasn't entirely true. The foolish young officer Pearce claimed to have left behind was diluted, more well-round, carefully controlled, but still there – visible in flashes, like glimpses of another, darker creature. The way people's past selves often lingered. He would be a fool if he thought she was suffering from split personality disorder, but she was certainly hiding a heck of a lot about herself.

There were moments when her eyes betrayed her, when she was angry or exhausted, or otherwise at the end of her patience. Aaron glanced at Reid, suddenly glad she had opted to punch him instead of something much worse.

He couldn't for a moment imagine Pearce hurting anyone on purpose, but…

Aaron remembered, with painful clarity, the way Kate Joyner had looked at him when he had defended Pearce and called her a good agent. It had been an expression of complete disbelief, though it had been hastily buried in the face of his recommendation. Not for the first time, he wondered what Kate had known about his junior agent that she hadn't had the chance to tell him.

Perhaps he should suspend her, he mused, until he knew what he was dealing with. It would be the sensible thing to do, the kind of thing a unit chief ought to decide, for the sake of his team. But how the hell would he describe his reasons in the relevant paperwork?

If he wrote 'using magic in public' on a suspension form he had no doubt that it would be him, not Pearce, Strauss would send directly to psychological evaluation.

He thought of Kate again, and wondered if there was someone in London he could talk to about this. Her old boss, perhaps – DCI Lightfoot. He could easily find the man's contact details from the London Metropolitan Police, even without Garcia's expert (but nosy) help.

Aaron had almost finished putting DCI Lightfoot's name into the search engine on his phone when he remembered the way Pearce tended to shut down entirely when her old team or their cases came up. She obviously had her own share of ghosts back there – even just the normal kind that everyone else had to deal with.

The image of Jack dressed as Spiderman flicked up on the background of his cell phone and he frowned. What would Jack tell him to do?

 _Be kind,_ he thought. _And don't judge._

Frowning, he peered through the gap in the seats to where she was sitting with the rest of the team, merrily winding Morgan up and talking about Christmas plans.

 _Can I trust you?_ he thought. _Or are you something I need to be afraid of?_

0o0

It had snowed in Washington while they had been away and Aaron passed several local specimens of snowman on the drive over to Stafford, Virginia. It made him think of his childhood, messing around in the snow with his brother, and – bitterly – of Haley and Jack. This job had ruined a lot of things, he reflected, but perhaps that had been beyond his control.

He could no more stop being the man he was, the dogged pursuer of justice, than Haley could stop hating that he wasn't there. He had a duty to use the skills at his disposal to prevent what horrors he could; if he had been a civilian, he would have expected no less from the FBI, working hard to keep people like him and his family safe. Letting them sleep soundly in their beds.

And that's what it came down to, really: duty, and knowing what might happen to a person if he didn't do it. Knowing what might happen to people like Haley and Jack.

Duty…

Sometimes duty was unpleasant.

There was a snowman on Pearce's front lawn when he pulled up outside. It was large and slightly wonky, primarily made by the snow from her driveway, which suggested it was of his agent's design. Aaron stared at it. It was wearing an old bobble hat and scarf, and what he could only describe as a sardonic expression. 'Look at me,' it seemed to say, 'I'll melt in a couple of days. What can you do?'

It was mildly unsettling, which he decided was probably her intention, assuming he wasn't simply projecting. He glanced back at the snowman as he reached her door, experiencing the strange feeling that it was somehow watching him, even though it was facing the other way.

He knocked on the door, hoping that his gamble had paid off and Pearce was in, instead of Christmas shopping or terrorising a small country, or something. Ordinarily, he would have called ahead, but he couldn't take the chance that she would avoid him. They needed to get this dealt with – preferably before either of them were back at Quantico. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to have at work, where someone might overhear.

It took a while for her to answer, and he heard her before he saw her.

"If you're selling cookies, I should warn you I have a bunch of allerg- oh," she said, opening the door. "Hello!"

Aaron couldn't help but smile. Pearce was dressed in jeans and an old jumper; there were enormous slipper-boots with pompoms on her feet and a string of tinsel around her neck like a scarf.

"May I come in?" he asked, and she grinned.

"Sure, I've just opened a care package from London, as it happens," she said, leading him through to her living room. "And I'd just made myself a cup of tea – good timing."

He nodded thoughtfully as she found him a mug. He had obviously interrupted her in the middle of decorating her Christmas tree. It was a plastic one, and still in a couple of pieces across the floor. All the decorations looked quite new, which he thought was odd. Pearce struck him as the kind of person who would have kept hand-me-downs.

"My old stuff and my parent's decs are in storage," she said, as if reading his mind. "Alice sent me a few bits and pieces, though. I've not got that far into the box yet, though." She showed him what was essentially a packing crate by the end of the sofa; looking inside, it was obvious that she had yet to penetrate the first layer.

Apparently Alice had gone all-out on the care package.

"She worries about me," said Pearce, with genuine fondness, pulling out a couple of boxes of pastries and a large jar of brightly coloured sweets. "She's still just a kid, really, so Christmas is a big deal for her. Ooh, gin! I suspect Max and Sophie gave her a hand, then."

She laughed.

It was difficult to reconcile the image of the slightly mad, obviously happy woman in front of him with someone capable of great harm. She looked like something out of an independent Christmas film.

The next item to appear was an old, but obviously cared for, Christmas stocking. Someone had wrapped it in tissue paper, which Pearce unwrapped with something akin to reverence. He took a closer look. Someone had sewn the name 'Grace' on it, rather inexpertly, and there was a picture made up of pieces of felt glued together in layers, of a little girl with big, blonde hair apparently hijacking Santa's sleigh.

"Mum helped me make this," said Pearce slowly. "She said my design ideas were non-traditional."

The corner of his mouth twitched up again at the thought of a five-year old Grace insisting that they depict a festive crime in felt. The smile on her face had moved towards something more painful – though it was still technically a smile.

"You never really get over losing a parent, do you?" she asked ruefully.

Aaron shook his head sadly, which seemed to shake her out of her reverie.

"I'm sorry," she said, and laughed again. "What can I do for you?"

 _No time like the present,_ he thought.

"I saw what you did to the car."

The first emotion to cross Pearce's face was confusion. "The car?" she echoed, obviously at a loss.

"In Happy Valley," Aaron clarified, and watched this sink in.

First, there was the slight bite to the lip – one of Pearce's tells – then the oddly direct way she met his gaze, as if she were doing it deliberately to show she wasn't afraid to; next, the careful Police-issue blank expression slid across her features and her gaze shifted about a millimetre to the right of his eyes, avoiding contact without initiating conflict.

Training was a useful thing at times.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, and even her tone was that slightly empty professional one they all used when their psych evaluations came around.

"I think you do," he said quietly. "You arrested William Beadle, you were walking him along the street towards the police station when he pushed you into the road." Aaron paused and watched her jaw tighten, but she didn't say anything. "The car… didn't hit you."

He stopped again, allowing her to comment.

"It swerved," she said, after a moment.

"No, it really didn't," he replied.

Pearce winced.

"I didn't have a choice," she said, picking up the jar of sweets. She put it down again, restless.

"Agreed," he acknowledged. "If you hadn't done something you both would have been killed – probably the driver, too."

She met his eyes then, assessing his expression, and the blank expression became a puzzled frown. "You're not angry." She opened her mouth again to say something, but shut it, changing her mind.

"I am a little," he admitted and watched as her eyes shifted away again, betraying a trace of hurt. "You lied to me."

Pearce gave a hollow chuckle. "And I suppose you'd have believed me?" she said, turning away. She started putting the tree together, mostly to have a reason not to look in his direction, Aaron thought. "'Oh, by the way, Hotch, magic is a thing and I'm rather good at it. Also I've finished my report on the strangler case in Idaho'. That would've gone down a charm. You wouldn't even have listened."

"No, I wouldn't," he told her. "I would have advised you to go home and sleep it off."

"Well then."

She sounded sulky, the way Jack did when he'd misbehaved. Aaron picked up another section of plastic tree.

"I'm listening now."

Pearce looked up at him, surprised, and he passed her the branch. Slowly, as if her fingers weren't entirely working, she slotted it into place.

"Um," she cleared her throat. "Magic is a thing," she said quietly – almost tentatively. "And – er… I finished my report on the strangler case in Idaho."

0o0

By the time he stepped out of Pearce's front door, night had fallen, her tree had been well and truly trimmed, and Aaron had a much more comprehensive idea of what she was and wasn't capable of. She had even leant him a few books on the subject.

It seemed to him that Grace couldn't quite believe that she wasn't being kicked off the team, or relocated, or suspended. If he had asked himself, the evening before, Aaron wouldn't have believed it either. He hadn't ignored her flippant comment about not wanting to be studied to death by some mysterious government agency, either.

"You'll let me know if a case involves… that kind of thing," he said as she followed him outside to see him off.

Pearce nodded. "Especially if it poses a danger."

"Even if it doesn't," Aaron amended. "We don't always recognise things as dangerous until they are." He gave her a pointed look, which she accepted with reasonable grace.

"William Beadle being a case in point, point taken," she allowed. "You won't tell the others?"

"Not unless they need to know – though, I assume Reid already does?"

Pearce nodded, note without a touch of sadness. They had been very close indeed for her to have trusted him with this, Aaron thought – and for him to have believed her.

They assessed one another for a moment before Aaron asked, "How widespread is it, do you think?"

"Magic in general? It's everywhere. Half the people who do it don't even know they are," she told him. "And the majority of the ones that do know what they're doing never bother anybody. I knew an arch-mage in Hackney, for example, who pours all his magic into making the best wedding cakes you've ever seen or tasted."

He chuckled and she smiled a little, encouraged.

"Magic isn't evil," she said. "It all depends on who uses it and what they use it for. It's – it's like a stick – you can make a stick into any number of things: the shaft of a broom, a stair-rod, something to stir paint with, a spoon – if it's the right shape. Only a small percentage of people would look at it and immediately think 'bludgeon'; fewer still would think 'spear'."

"Magic wand?" he quipped, and it earned him a broader smile.

"If you like. I always break them, though. I whack them against walls and snap them, usually just before I need them."

Aaron speculated that this was probably quite true.

"Thank you – for being honest with me," he said.

Pearce crossed her arms against the cold – or maybe against something else. "Thank you for believing me."

He reached the end of the house and realised something was missing. "Oh," he said sadly, motioning to a sodden hat trampled into the snow. "Someone's kicked over your snowman."

Pearce joined him, surveying the mess of footprints that had destroyed the pristine snow blanketing her front yard.

"Bloody goblins," she said, and Aaron had to glance at her expression just to check that she didn't mean real ones. "Time was, kids would think twice before messing with a witch's garden."

She looked up and down the street, checking no one was watching, then made an elegant gesture with her left hand that cast the snow up in a swirl. It was beautiful, like something out of a dream. When it settled, the snowman was rebuilt – complete with its hat and slightly odd expression – and the snow around him was flawless once more.

"That ought to freak them out," she reflected, and glanced at Aaron, who was astonished to discover he was grinning.

0o0

Grace shut the door, cocking her head to one side as the sound of Hotch's engine disappeared down the lane, feeling a emotionally exhausted.

It was a big ask, expecting someone to trust a person with the whole paranatural thing.

She collected the mugs from the coffee table in her – now very Christmassy – living room and went to put them in the dishwasher.

 _On reflection,_ she thought, _that could have been a lot worse._


	21. Meet Me in St Quantico

**Essential listening: Fairytale of New York, The Pogues & Kirsty McColl**

0o0

"And the boys of the NYPD choir were singin' Galway Bay, and the bells were ringin' out for Christmas day!"

Grace walked through the empty bullpen, singing along with the little radio she had put on the top of her in tray. It was a bit surreal, seeing the BAU office festooned with Christmas cheer – as it had been for the past couple of weeks – but what was weirder was seeing it so bereft of life. It was eerie as hell, but then Grace could handle eerie.

Like settlers hearing gold had been found in the cape, the assorted agents of America's foremost criminal detection agency had fled to the four corners of the Earth as soon as they had hit the 21st of December, leaving naught but a skeleton crew in residence. The other teams were technically on call, but for once the serial killers of America seemed to have entered into the festive spirit and were taking a few days off themselves. That left only the thousands of ongoing investigations to deal with, and since every other investigative unit in the country was closing its doors for Christmas (unless they, too, were on call), there wasn't much point forcing everyone to stay on.

Although their team had been taken off the on-call rota this year, Grace had quietly elected to stay in the office as soon as everyone had disappeared. It had earned her a ten minute lecture from Hotch about taking the proper amount of time off, during which she had simply stared at the poorly concealed go bag under his desk and the pillow he had stashed under the couch in his office for when he slept in the office. He had given in, in the end, on the agreement she take Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day off, and she had relaxed.

The rest of the team had waved goodbye, each assuming that she had somewhere to be, same as them. Morgan had departed first, sweeping Garcia along with him, since she had no family of her own; they were spending the holidays in Chicago with his mother and sisters. Grace imagined it would be spectacular – and that Garcia would provide the pictures to prove it. Todd was next, heading back home to the Hamptons. She had been complaining about having to spend time with her family for weeks, and Grace suspected she would love it despite the grumbling.

Emily, too, had grouched about her family. Her mother was expecting her attend the cycle of functions, parties and photo opportunities that an ambassador's family had to navigate, and the entire team had been threatened with dire consequences if any of them – say – found the pictures and had them made up into a collage and put them up around the bullpen. Grace gave her approximately until Morgan and Garcia got back before all hell broke loose.

Rossi had been intending to sit down and finish his latest draft of his newest book, which was possibly the only reason Hotch had managed to persuade him to take time off at all. The man was notorious for never taking leave; he often donated it to other people instead. Reid was going home to Vegas to spend some time with his mum and maybe mend some bridges with his father. Grace hoped that went better for him than she expected it might. He could do with a bit of an emotional break after this year.

So could she.

Haley had invited Hotch to Christmas day with her family and Jack, which was very kind of her, but was also likely to be excruciating. Grace was half-expecting him to appear in the office at some point, fed up of pretending to be cheerful, but he never did. JJ and Will had departed to her mother's with a baffled, cheerful baby in tow, ready to celebrate Henry's first Christmas together.

Anderson had been the last one on her floor to leave; his family lived in Baltimore so he didn't have far to go. Given that they were the only two left for a couple of days he had moved his stuff to an adjacent desk and they had worked quite happily in a little Christmassy island of calm until he went. He was one of the few agents she had been able to persuade to try the mince pies Alice and the gang had sent her over from London, too. Most of the others were too squicked out at the possibility that they contained meat, despite Grace's enthusiastic assurances to the contrary.

Now, though, they were all gone. If it wasn't for the cameras, Grace would have been tempted to use magic to boil the kettle and make her tea, but she didn't want to take that chance, no matter how unexpectedly understanding Hotch had been about it.

She looked around the empty desks, feeling oddly at peace with the world. Other people might have been sad or annoyed to be the only one in on Christmas Eve, but she wasn't either. Grace didn't mind. Better someone with kids or aging relatives had the time off. What would she do with it, after all? Sit at home on her own and watch TCM? No, she'd take leave in spring instead, when the garden needed digging over.

In the meantime she was powering through her reports, staunchly ignoring the loneliness that was beginning to creep over her. She carried her tea back over to her desk, humming along with the songs on the radio. There was a text from Troy waiting for her when she got there and she grinned, opening the picture message of him and his nephews pulling faces in front of a decorated Christmas tree.

' _Miss you, trouble maker.'_

' _Miss you too. Looks like you have enough trouble makers there to make up for it!'_ she replied, and laughed when he texted back a list of the transgressions they had already had to report to the Shelf on the Elf that day.

They had spent the day together the week before, picking out a Christmas tree for his shop (decorated with shiny nuts and bolts, the next day). It had been a lovely day, fooling around in the snow with nothing in the world to worry about, making out like couple of teenagers in the park. Both of them had been curiously averse at the prospect of spending the holidays together, however, so in the end Troy had headed back home on his own and Grace had settled in for her lonely vigil. She hadn't really expected anything else. They hadn't really been going out long enough for him to introduce her to his family just yet, anyway. Consequently, the time outside of work had been quiet, too, and Grace had spent her evenings at home drinking mulled wine and crafting.

She took a picture of her cup of tea, a mince pie and a stack of file folders and sent it over, eliciting jealousy over the mince pie and a reminder not to work too hard.

Grace laughed. It was surprisingly satisfying to be able to get through so many reports without either the phone ringing or her email pinging. Still, without the radio on it was a little odd to have almost the entire building to herself, so she was quite glad when Alice skyped her, just after lunch. It was tea time in London, and Alice had obviously been able to persuade her adoptive father out of the office for once.

They chatted for a couple of hours while Grace worked, catching up on news and gossip, until Alice went to make dinner and Lightfoot used the opportunity to 'help' with the cases she was working on. It was a companionable way to spend an afternoon, and she felt a distinct pang of regret at being so far away when they signed off.

She worked steadily for a few more hours until the sky grew dark and she'd looped through the Christmas music on the local radio station twice. She turned the radio off and settled down to eat a rather disappointing vaguely festive turkey sandwich. It was dry and unpromising, and she wasn't over fond of it. She left it unfinished and opened the next file.

The door creaked open; Grace looked up at a sound the usual hum of office traffic generally covered. To her surprise, Rossi sauntered in, coat still on – so he wasn't staying. He was halfway across the bullpen before he noticed her.

"Oh, hey," he said, equally astonished at seeing another human. "Thought you took off for Christmas."

"Nope," said Grace, with a wry smile. "Got nowhere else to go. Swapped out with an agent with three little ones."

Rossi chuckled. "That's a bad habit," he remarked.

"Personal experience?" Grace asked. "You are here after hours."

"Writer's block," he said simply, and Grace nodded, sympathetic. "I came for essential materials."

"It's alright for some," she said, without malice.

Her fellow agent merely grinned and stalked towards his office. Grace shook her head. She burst out laughing, however, when he emerged a minute or two later with a bottle of scotch.

"Essential materials?" she teased.

"Indispensable." He stopped on the far side of Morgan's desk and fixed her with a long look over the partition. "Dinner, scotch, bad movies?"

Grace smirked and met his eyes. "Why, Agent Rossi – are you propositioning me?" she quipped. "Because I've been warned about you."

"Honest offer," he said, with a grin. "I don't wanna eat alone on Christmas Eve, and I worked enough of them that I've got no family left. Take it from an older, wiser agent – you don't want to follow in my footsteps."

Grace considered this for a moment, and the ache that was beginning to travel up her spine, and capitulated. "Well, when you put it like that…"

0o0

Grace woke up, happy to be warm and in her own bed, instead of in some anonymous hotel on the trail of something heinous, and knew it was Christmas.

She stretched, taking pleasure in the knowledge that she had no one to please, or to get up and cook for, and could take the day at her leisure.

The world outside her bedclothes was cold and she sucked a breath through her teeth when her feet hit the floor. With a smirk, she summoned her slippers and dressing gown, feeling that it didn't count as cheating at all if no one saw her do it.

The house was beginning to lighten, given how late she had slept, but it was overcast so the house was gloomy.

 _Well,_ she thought, _we shall see about that._

She curved her hand gracefully and waved it across all the little points of matter and chaos that needed a nudge, smiling to herself. All around her house, in every room, lights that might appear to outside observers to be Christmas decorations sprung to life. True fairy lights – the lights of the fae; not made from fairies, nor by fairies, simply lights of pure magic. Brightly coloured things, spinning gently through the air, lending their light to her home.

A smile gracing her lips, she went to make herself a cup of tea and some toast, in no hurry to act the small child and tear open her modest collection of presents.

It was a pleasant enough day, though at first her house seemed cavernous and quiet without anyone to share the festive magic with. It was simple enough to rectify, and after turning on the television, all the lights, the radio in the bathroom, the CD player in the kitchen and iPod dock in her book room, everything seemed a lot jollier. It was a little lonely, but Grace could handle lonely.

Having learned from experience that there are few things more depressing than a meal for one on Christmas day, Grace cooked a good size of dinner – enough to feed her for a week, and more if she was careful – the way she had liked it back home: goose with all the trimmings, stuffed squash, roast potato and veg, sprouts fried with butter and bacon. And for afters, Christmas pudding with cinnamon sauce. It was a touch ridiculous, she admitted, as she tidied the leftovers away, particularly as she intending to eat the food she'd intended to have the night before – her traditional Christmas Eve fayre: smoked salmon, cream cheese, crackers, several kinds of cheese, grapes and mince pies.

She had even got herself a large block of chocolate and a new book to indulge in the Icelandic custom of staying up all night and reading on Christmas Eve. No matter – she would be able to put it to good use later on, and hanging out with Rossi was always entertaining.

She rubbed the back of her neck, hoping that his hangover was at least as bad as hers had been – still lingering by two in the afternoon.

At last, with a glass of port in hand, singing loudly along with the music, Grace applied herself to the presents underneath the Christmas tree. There was a hat and scarf from Alice, a bottle of something murderously alcoholic from Sophie, an old book she'd been after for years from Lightfoot, a framed photo of her with her old team from Geoff and his family (along with an extremely glittery card made by his kids), and a beautifully made cribbage board from Max.

She ran her fingers over the gold and purple inlaid wood of the cribbage board fondly. She and Max had often played, whiling away the long hours of midnight watches. It would be good to be able to play once more.

Troy had got her a bottle of her favourite kind of tea gin, which she decided she would open later, and a fancy glass to go with it. It made her smile, thinking of the night they had gone ice-skating. She texted him her thanks and he sent her a line of kiss emojis in return, along with thanks for the tankard and craft ales she had found for him.

That only left the stocking from the BAU and the Secret Santa present. Because they were almost always on call, the team tended to restrict their festive enthusiasm to stocking fillers – hence Garcia's regular Secret Santa scheme. It made perfect sense to Grace, who had never found it difficult to find small things her friends might enjoy. Far better than more extravagant nothings that they didn't want or need. Most of the things in her stocking were either edible or drinkable, which was distinctly satisfying, except for a spectacular pair of Christmas earrings that Garcia had probably been giggling about for a month.

She had drawn Garcia's name and had made her a long Doctor Who scarf in glittery wool. She was a little intrigued to know who had got her. When she opened the Secret Santa she discovered a plain cardboard box containing a build-your-own dollhouse room kit.

 _Reid_ , she thought at once, remembering their conversation in Clackamas Happy Valley's City Hall.

She pulled out several bags of wooden pieces, all numbered, some of them painted; glue; wire; what looked like watch-making tools; sheets of paper with numbered patterns printed on them; small swatches of fabric; a bag of coloured gravel. Under these were a selection of miniature objects that couldn't be constructed from the wood – what looked like plant pots, an old trunk, plants, a tiny tea set – and a couple of small lights, complete with wiring and a battery pack.

"Wow," she exclaimed.

There wasn't a picture of what the finished product might be supposed to look like, which she suspected was part of the gift – Reid would know perfectly well that not knowing what it would turn out to be would drive her mad until she put the kit together. She chuckled at herself – and at him.

"Well, that's my afternoon sorted," she decided, and settled down with the kit, a cup of tea and a Miss Marple boxset on her television.

The more of the kit she put together, the more she enjoyed it – making tiny folds or cuts, gluing pieces together, arranging stacks of books. Eventually, she had a light, airy looking room, about twelve inches long and six wide, and a table full of furniture, books, small paintings and maps, and plants.

"I guess I just decide where to put things from here," she said, looking at the instructions, which ended with the last thing to be put together and gave no design at all for how things were to be laid out.

She took her time laying the room out, trying four or five different arrangements until she was happy. In the end she made it look like someone had just left the room, a cup of tea and an open book left behind, a sweet pea in a tiny jar. It was beautiful and a little melancholic, and that rather suited her mood at that moment.

The dollhouse room was so perfectly an expression of her, in fact, that she suspected it had to be a custom build.

Touched, Grace took an arty picture (or, as arty as she could manage) of the little room and sent it to Reid, thanking him for such a thoughtful gift. By the time she had made herself up a plate of festive cheese and smoked salmon, her phone chimed, with an answering image of Diana Reid, fast asleep with a book clutched to her chest and the colourful blanket Grace had made over her legs.

' _She loves it – thank you so much!'_

She grinned, pleased that her work was appreciated.

' _How's Christmas at Bennington?'_ she asked, curling up on her sofa and pulling her own blanket around her.

' _It's good. : ) Christmas dinner was nice, and there were carols last night.'_

' _Cool! Sounds really cosy. Did they make you sing?'_

' _Yes. : ( '_

Grace laughed. _'Anyone get that on film?'_

' _No, thankfully.'_

' _Damn!'_

' _: p '_

 _'How's your Christmas?'_

' _Not bad. Bit quiet, but I'm enjoying Miss Marple and a mince pie. What more do you need?'_ _How's_

There was a minute or two of silence, during which a body was discovered in a library and Inspector Slack was summoned. Her phone chimed again. This time, there was a picture of a book – _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ , by the look of it – a slice of fruit cake and a glass of what was probably port.

' _Great minds,'_ said the accompanying text.

She grinned and took a picture of her glass of whiskey. _'Chin chin!'_

' _Cheers : ) '_

Grace expected the conversation to end there, with festive pleasantries and a little polite silliness, and settled down to watch some more _Marple_. A few minutes later, however, her phone went off again, with an enquiry about the weather that sent her to the front yard to photograph the snowman, still standing sentinel over the end of Apple Tree Lane. Reid responded with a picture of the desert, which he must have taken out of the back of Bennington, which was on the outskirts of Summerlin.

Then it was her turn to think of something; she sent him an image of the actors on screen, paused so they were pulling the strangest of faces – he sent her a picture of some of the residents of the home, peacefully dozing in their Christmas hats, sleeping off their festive feast.

' _Nice. They make you wear one?'_

' _Mom's neighbours wouldn't let me take it off,'_ he grumbled.

With a certain amount of cajoling, she managed to persuade him to send her a picture of that – in which he looked suitably chagrined.

' _Adorable.'_

' _: p Your turn,'_ he said. _'Fair's fair.'_

' _I'm not wearing one… hang on.'_ She cast around for something that would make him laugh and eventually settled on a head band with glittery reindeer antlers and bells on it. _'There.'_

' _xD Haha! Very attractive.'_

' _Flatterer.'_

' _Can't resist a woman in antlers.'_

That made her laugh so much she nearly spat out her whiskey. She wondered how much he'd had to drink for him to be coquettish. It was kind of fun.

What had started out as small talk quickly developed into a game, each one taking it in turns to snap a picture of something Christmassy in their environment and the other trying to match it in some way, punctuated by smatterings of laughter. The only break was for the Doctor Who Christmas special, which was playing on BBC America, and which the hospital administrator allowed Reid to watch in his office while his mum dozed in her armchair.

That's how she eventually fell asleep, curled up on the sofa with her phone and a drink, texting back and forth into the small hours, wondering fleetingly why it was so much easier to talk to him when he wasn't in the room.


	22. Soul Mates

**Essential listening: My Life Would Suck Without You, Kelly Clarkson**

 **0o0**

" _No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore."_

 _Sigmund Freud_

0o0

Grace pulled off her suit jacket, glad Emily had reminded her to pack for warmer weather. It was January still, but January in Florida, which appeared to be a lot more like an English May. Grace, who had spent the evening before they flew out drinking glühwein and eating the last few of the Christmas treats her British friends had sent her, found herself wanting ice lollies and lemonade. It was a bit of a shock to the system.

The office had continued to be pretty much bereft of agents over the holidays and even Hotch had stayed away, wanting to make the most of his time with Jack (though Grace was reasonably sure he'd taken work home with him). They'd started to trickle back after New Year, which was something of a relief. She had forgotten how much she liked being around people – particularly these people.

The long, lonely week between Christmas and New Year had gone faster with Reid on the other end of her phone, though. She wasn't sure what to make of that – or that he was talking to her again the way he had before their ill-advised relationship had soured things between them. Or that when Troy got home and called to ask her out to dinner on the 29th she'd entirely forgotten he was coming back from his parents' house that day. She was currently choosing to put it down to being in the midst of the strange doldrums the festive period created, intensified for her because of the absence of all her colleagues.

Really, they spent so much time together they might as well have been family.

New Year's Eve had been at Rossi's, with much drinking and carousing, and it was likely that Grace had not been the only one with a complaining head the next morning. She hadn't laughed so much in a long time.

She had vague memories of dancing with every member of the team at some point (even Reid), and with Will; he and JJ had been particularly tipsy, probably because it was their first proper night out after Henry was born. Morgan had cornered her under the mistletoe (as he had with all his female team mates) and kissed her on the cheek. Garcia had 'accidentally' found herself beneath it at least three times, which had made Grace, JJ and Emily laugh. There had been a long, involved game of Cards Against Humanity (with any reference to serial killers or dead children carefully excised) that had made both Reid and Hotch blush and Grace had eventually stumbled home around four a.m., along with Reid and Morgan, who was staying with the Doctor over what was left of the night.

The whole team had let loose for the first time in months and there was a distinct feeling that they had needed to – that all the horrors they faced were manageable as long as they could have the occasional night like that. It was as if suddenly all was right with the world once more.

By the fourth of January, though, that feeling had definitely evaporated. They had been called to Florida after the sixth young girl in six months had turned up missing. Sarasota was understandably pretty freaked out, particularly as this unsub was switching between white and black victims. An unusual pattern, statistically speaking; the majority of unsubs tended to either pick their victims exclusively from within their own cultural background or entirely ignore it and go for anyone. This was more specific and that gave them something to work with, at least. He was evolving, too. The latest victim, Missy DeWalt, was younger than the previous women, attending high school rather than college.

So, off they had flown to Sarasota, to work a profile on a serial killer with a quickening appetite for a Detective who was really beginning to feel the pressure from the community and was increasing angry that he hadn't been able to help the first few victims.

In response to this frustration, as soon as they had had a name – and far too early for them to have any evidence against him – Detective Linden had rushed to arrest the suspect their profile indicated, publically and quite thoroughly.

It was understandable, but problematic in terms of the rest of the investigation: they didn't have enough to hold him and they definitely have enough to put pressure on him to tell them where Missy DeWalt was. And while there was a chance that she was alive they badly needed to deliver that pressure.

Linden, who had been swept up in his excitement at the prospect of putting this case to bed at last and bringing a girl home safely (particularly such a young one), was beginning to realise the magnitude of the mistake he had made.

"All week you've been sayin' he needed privacy and time," said Linden, as Morgan, Rossi, Pearce and the detective huddled outside the interview room. William Harris, the man they were one hundred percent sure was their unsub was inside, stewing. He was a lawyer by trade, which was only going to make this harder. "You told me he wouldn't keep her on his property." He shook his head, annoyed at himself. "But I wouldn't listen."

"Detective, we have a witness who can place him at the abduction site," said Morgan, who understood just how the guy felt. "He has a history of similar offences where he did use the same M.O. in Atlanta."

Rossi nodded. "He fits the profile: a high-functioning, successful family man living and working in the area."

"You had probable cause to make the arrest," Morgan told him, then added – as gently as he could, "We just don't have enough to prosecute him yet."

"What's our next move?" Linden asked.

 _Good,_ Grace thought. _His head's still in the game_. _We can move on and pick up the pieces, and maybe bring Missy DeWalt home in one piece._

"The key to finding her could be at his house," he said aloud. "So we're gonna need to dig through all areas of his life. Family, work, his friends."

"The rest of our team is already there," said Grace, watching the unsub through the one-way glass. He looked more bored than anything, completely secure in the knowledge that they didn't have a thing on him. "Talking to the family, combing through his house. Our tech back in Virginia is probably accessing his computer as we speak."

"Agent Morgan and I will interrogate him," said Rossi.

"Alright," said Linden, sounding far from comfortable with this strategy.

"He holds them for two days before he kills them," said Morgan. "Missy disappeared yesterday, so as long as he stays in custody there's a good chance that she could still be alive."

 _Unless he has an accomplice_ , Grace thought. _But we didn't profile him as someone who needs that kind of dominant-subservient relationship._

She didn't say it out loud, however. There was no need for unhelpful speculation.

"Talk to the detective that arrested him for the Atlanta rapes," Rossi instructed Linden. "Find out what went right and what went wrong with their approach."

"William Harris is a successful litigator, so we're going to need some leverage," Morgan reminded them. "Somethin' to throw him off guard. A discrepancy in a previous statement. That's enough to give us the upper hand."

"I'll get on that," Linden agreed. "Now we can only hold him for so long once he goes for the judge. What're the odds we can get him to break in the next twelve hours?"

Rossi raised an eyebrow. "That's not gonna be easy."

"We've just got to figure out where to push," said Grace, as Rossi and Morgan went in.

"So, those two are interrogatin', the rest of the team are going through his house and talking to his neighbours," said Linden. "What are you doing?"

Grace glanced in his direction. The detective didn't look like he was annoyed, more like he was assessing their strategy for future reference.

"Our Media Liaison has her hands full with this one, so I'm the BAU point of contact for Missy's family," she explained. "Which means staying here in case something turns up, so I'm where the family expect me to be – but not in an interrogation room, because I'd have to turn my phone off. I expect I'll be helping with the paper trail and the geographic profile." She nodded at the unsub. "For the moment, I'm watching him."

"Aren't they watching him?" Linden asked, as the two agents began their verbal chess match.

"They are," said Grace. "And if I was at the house, it wouldn't matter, but since I'm here I can keep an eye on his body language and physiological responses in case they miss anything."

"Like a back-up."

"You never watch your partner or colleagues in an interrogation?" she asked, though she could tell he wasn't questioning her decision.

"All the time," he said and they shared a brief smile.

He left her to it, presumably to make the call to the detective in Atlanta, and by the time he had returned it was obvious they would need all the help they could get. Years of legal training and a pathological ability to lie had made William Harris a particularly cool customer. But then, they hadn't expected anything less.

"He's gonna review his files and call me back," said Linden, who had evidently been unable to prevent himself from gravitating back towards the interrogation room.

Grace nodded, watching the unsub watching Morgan and Rossi, shaking his head in fabricated horror at the photos of the previous victims. To a casual observer it might seem like Harris was simply a man annoyed at being wrongfully pursued by the police, but to Grace and her team (and likely to the detective, too) he was obviously being just cooperative and just obstructive enough to not cause himself any problems when the judge agreed to bail him out.

Morgan and Rossi were prodding him from every angle, but they knew as well as she did that there wouldn't be a chink in his armour until they found something to apply a little pressure with. For now, they were playing with him as much as he was playing with them. Grace was glad she wasn't in there with him and didn't have to hold her tongue. She'd read the autopsy notes; those women had suffered.

"So, William," Rossi said expansively, and Grace recognised the I'm-about-to-irritate-the-crap-outta-this-guy tone. "You've been married – what? Eighteen years?"

"What is he doing?" Linden asked, puzzled at the slightly bizarre shift in line of questioning.

"Trying to get under his skin," Grace told him.

"Think it'll work?"

"Well, it works on me," she admitted. "Worth a shot. You never know what button will set them off."

Linden nodded. "You got that right."

"You remember that feeling you get when you fall in love?" Rossi continued, leaning on the table now, physically increasing the informality of the interview, inviting Harris in. His voice still held that mocking tone, however, and given how long the unsub had been a lawyer it wasn't making a dent. He appeared to be humouring him for the moment, seeing where it would go. He did roll his eyes, though. "All those firsts – a kiss, the smell of her hair… it's exciting. You miss that feeling, don't you?"

A small smile formed on Harris's lips; he knew exactly what Rossi was up to, and it wasn't making him uncomfortable (as it might an innocent man).

 _No,_ thought Grace, _it's making him impatient._

"Being married to the same woman, it's like – ordering the same entrée for eighteen years," Rossi scoffed and Grace snorted.

"This is getting us nowhere," she reflected. "Though it does explain a lot about Rossi's past relationships. I'm going to pick up the geographic profile where Reid left off."

 _And hope he doesn't get too ticked off with me when he sees it_.

0o0

Spencer, who had just got back from the Harris' house, took a seat by an empty desk, not even bothering to look over at the maps in what might ordinarily be termed his domain. Pearce was obviously about halfway through a geographic profile already and he could safely leave it in her capable hands.

She had obviously been cross referencing with Garcia, who was in a window on a nearby computer, ready to be omniscient and all-powerful, as usual.

"You find anything yet?" he asked.

" _Nothing on the missing girl, but gimme a minute and I will find the grime,"_ she said, poised for action.

"Okay, you ready to start searching his computer?" he said, plugging the cable in and powering it up.

" _Mhmm, born ready."_

There were a series of electronic noises and Harris's machine started opening things apparently of its own accord.

"You seem to be in control," Spencer observed drily.

" _Oh, I'm always in control, sweetcheeks."_

"Down girl," teased Pearce from somewhere behind him; from the sound of it she hadn't bothered to turn and look and neither did Spencer, too focussed on the screen in front of him.

"So far Harris seems pretty intelligent," he remarked. "He's been covering his tracks pretty well."

"Well, he graduated from an Ivy League university," said Pearce, using her standard anarchic mix of British and American terminology. "I hear the entrance exams would even give you pause, Reid."

"Oh please," he said, not looking up. "I breezed them."

Somehow he knew without glancing at her that she smiled at that, like he had some kind of weird Pearce-based radar.

" _Yah, just because you delete your internet history doesn't mean all of your dirty cyber-laundry isn't hanging out there for me to find on your hard drive,"_ said Garcia as she typed at something approaching the speed of sound. _"Rookie mistake!"_

"You got something?" Spencer asked, frowning at the screen as things whizzed around it.

" _You bettya. Oh, a whole lot of something, from the look of it,"_ she added, her voice changing slightly. _"Looks like Mr Unsub kept a blog that he didn't want the lovely wife and daughter to know about."_

"Could you –" he began, but Garcia interrupted.

" _Way ahead of you, Boy Wonder,"_ she said and the office printer on the desk beside him sprung to life. _"Should be printing now."_

"Thanks."

" _Always. I'll scream my cute little shoes off it I get anything else."_

He left her spelunking through a very bad man's hard drive and went to investigate the blog entries. There were rather a lot of them.

"Hey Grace, you done with the geographic profile?" he asked, reading the first page at light speed.

"Almost."

"Can you give me a hand with these?"

She appeared in his peripheral vision and he was momentarily sent off-course by her usual Strawberry scent, a note of cinnamon apparently added today as a sort of seasonal addendum, but he crushed those thoughts before they could get anywhere. In the seconds it had taken him to register the problem and deal with it she had skim-read the first entry.

"I see what you mean. I'll call the geographic profile 'good enough for government work' and come back to it later if we need to," she said. "I'll find Linden and see if he minds us clearing the other board."

He nodded, barely noticing her hurrying off, his mind already buried in the blog.

0o0

They had pinned the entries to the board Linden had helped them clear and Reid had scrawled their joint language analysis all over them. Now they were into the second pass and he was pointing out inconsistencies or repeats while Grace pulled the requisite parts out of the document and printed them larger, to make life easier.

Harris and his 'friend' had obviously been writing to one another in size 10 font, which was entirely unhelpful from their point of view. Honestly, serial killers could be so inconsiderate sometimes.

Linden, Morgan and Rossi had appeared while they were debating whether the other participant in the dialogue was real or imaginary. Initially, they had considered a split psyche (always a possibility when someone had such entirely separate personalities in front of their families compared to their victims), but were both beginning to concede that two real people were much more likely, given the language quirks. Unless Harris was way more into creative writing than they had any evidence for, it was unlikely that he even registered that the way he wrote was idiosyncratic.

"What've you got?" Rossi asked, interrupting their debate.

"Garcia's been digging through William's computer," Reid explained. "She found an encrypted link to a webpage."

"Where'd it take you?" Morgan asked, interested.

"An unsearchable, untraceable blog with tons of journal entries," said Reid.

"It's like a diary," Grace told them. "Going back over five months, almost as long as Harris has lived in Sarasota."

"You find anything incriminating?" Rossi asked.

"We were able to differentiate between two distinct voices," he said. "Two authors. We found various idiosyncratic words, phrases, punctuation and orthography within the blog entries, consistent with each separate person."

"It's a conversation," Grace managed to get in, otherwise happy to let Reid have his head here.

He was obviously delighted to get his teeth into a linguistic problem for a change and she wasn't about to steal his adorably nerdy thunder.

"Words like 'soda' and 'pop' – one guy uses dashes, while the other uses ellipses," he enthused with a grin, pleased with his deductions. He laughed.

Reid turned back to the corkboard, oblivious to Detective Linden's rather sardonic expression.

Linden turned to Rossi and asked in an undertone, "Where d'you find this kid?"

Rossi leaned over, an equally serious expression on his face, and replied, "He was left in a basket on the steps of the FBI."

Grace snorted loudly and inelegantly, only just managing to hide her face behind a file before Reid could turn round and peer at her in surprise. She had her features rearranged into a much more respectful frown by the time he gave up on her and addressed the others instead.

"One side of the discourse made reference to the 'Devil's strip'," he told them.

"What the hell's that?" Linden asked.

"Uh – it's a small patch of grass that separates the sidewalk from the street," Reid replied. "Now this term is only used in central Ohio. William lived in Atlanta for twenty years, but he grew up in Columbus. The other guy uses words like 'turnpike' and 'filling the gas tank', both specific regionalisms for Florida."

They paused, watching as William Harris was escorted from the bathroom break he had been on and back into the interview room.

"Kid, you sure about this?" Morgan asked.

Reid gave him a look that Morgan correctly interpreted to mean 'Really? You're asking the guy with an IQ of 187 if he's sure about a linguistic analysis?'.

"Right."

Rossi and Linden followed Morgan back towards the interview room.

Reid turned to her and rolled her eyes. "Am I sure?" he scoffed.

Grace offered him a small smile, which he returned – if a little hesitantly.

He narrowed his eyes. "What did Rossi say?"

She pressed her lips together, obviously trying not to laugh and watched the corner of his mouth twitch up.

"What? Did I miss something again?"

"Er… he implied that you were raised at Quantico, like some kind of FBI foundling," she told him, somehow keeping her face straight.

"Hah, great," said Reid, rolling his eyes again. He met her gaze and then somehow they were both laughing, side by side, facing the board full of blogs in the middle of Homicide in the Sarasota Police Department and trying not to be too loud because they were supposed to be professional FBI agents.

"Sorry. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," said Grace, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth to try to stifle her giggles.

"It's – it's okay," Reid laughed, looking up as hard as he could to try to regain some composure. "Oh man… Sometimes Rossi's such a…" he trailed off, still chuckling.

"Smart arse?" Grace suggested.

"Tch-yeah!" He laughed again. "Okay, my focus is shot all to hell and we've been staring at this for two straight hours. You wanna grab a tea or something?"

"Yeah," she accepted, before she'd even had time to think, and followed him in the direction of the cafeteria.

And so the two of them were out of the room when Linden got the word that they'd found Missy DeWalt's corpse. They were back in time to see Morgan dragging the detective out of the interrogation room, however, where he had tried to attack Harris.

"They found Missy Dewalt," said Rossi.

"I'm going to assume she's not now having tea and cookies?" Grace asked, her heart falling.

Rossi shook his head, looking down.

"Sorry Reid," she apologised, patting his arm. "I better get over to the family."

"Sure. I'll keep working on the blog entries," he said, rubbing his arm and hurrying back over to the wall, all traces of levity expunged.

"Detective Linden," said Grace, ignoring the fact that Morgan was still having to hang onto him. "I'm going to go inform the family before the press get wind of this. Do you want to join me, or are you heading to the dump site?"

Linden glared at her for a moment before averting his gaze. "I'll go to Missy," he said sadly. "I – I can't face her parents right now."

"Understood. I'll take a couple of officers with me." She met Rossi's eye as she walked briskly past and nodded towards the interview room. "If he's in there, who dumped the body?"

As one, they both turned to look at where Reid was working on the blog entries.

Rossi swore. "There's two of them."


	23. She Looks So Right

**Essential listening: My Fault, by Imagine Dragons**

Spencer moved swiftly between each journal entry, chewing his lip. It was florid and packed with bad poetry, and there was definitely something weird about that, since Harris didn't strike him as the hopeless romantic.

 _Perhaps he just has hidden depths_ , he thought, _and I'm chasing red herrings._

"Hey."

His train of thought derailed, he turned to find Grace stripping off her jacket. She looked world-weary, which wasn't surprising after having to inform a family of their daughter's death.

"Hey," he said, not needing to ask how it had gone. Notifying never went well. "You're back sooner I thought."

"The family needed some space," she told him. "I left the family liaison from the department there, and a couple of officers Todd debriefed to keep the press at bay."

"They're there already?" he asked, surprised.

"These murders have most of the state stirred up," she said heavily. "And bad news makes good copy. Vultures." She sighed and leaned against the table. "How's Linden taking it?"

"Not great," Spencer told her, folding his arms and joining her. "He's coping, though, from what Emily told me. He promised the family he'd find their daughter – which is surprising. He's got years of homicide experience."

Grace shook her head. "No matter how hard you try, someone always manages to extract a promise like that, and it never ends well."

Spencer nodded sadly.

"So, catch me up – what've we got?" Grace asked briskly; they didn't have time to dwell today. It would only be a matter of time with a second unsub on the loose.

"The entries feel like love letters," he said, pointing out phrases. "'Our eyes met and I just knew,' 'Thank you for the perfect evening,' 'It makes me so happy, I want to return the favour'. But I don't think this is an affair. It's gotta be to a partner…"

"But?" Pearce prompted, picking up on his tone.

"It just doesn't sound like the kind of thing a psychopath would write to a partner. It's too personal – almost loving."

"Well, we've seen serial killers with successful partnerships before," she allowed, "but they are usually linked by family, like Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono."

"That might fit the pattern, though," Spencer speculated. "Kenneth Bianchi murdered two women in Washington without his partner after the investigation into the Hillside Strangler got too hot and he moved state. We know Harris was questioned for several rapes in Atlanta before moving here. If he has teamed up with someone it has to be a person with the same or complimentary proclivities."

"Folie à Deux," Grace reflected. "The madness of two."

"Exactly," he agreed. "But even if William and his partner are experiencing a joint evolution in their killing, the language seems a little overly romantic."

"And his partner is likely to be his equal, so another successful family man with heterosexual ephebophilia," she nodded. "Unlikely to be romantically interested in sex or romance with another man. You think they're using some kind of code?"

"Buried somewhere in there, yeah."

Together they scanned through the messages, highlighting anything that looked like it might not fit, or anything that seemed overly profound. There was a lot of it and it took the better part of an hour. By the time they were finished, the print outs were a mess of red and blue markings. They stood back to examine their handy work.

"'Faith should never be broken'," Grace read aloud. "Is that me or does that sound like a contract?"

"It's repeated here," said Spencer, pointing to a later entry. "And here."

"Always after a murder, but not after each one."

"Like they're reminding each other to keep each other out of trouble."

"That's why he killed and dumped Missy," Grace realised. "He's trying to get William out so they can be together again."

"Tell me you found his partner," said Morgan, appearing from the direction of the interview rooms, obviously quite annoyed with the smug man they were holding. It took a few moments for them to surface, both still running lines of text through their minds. "Guys?"

"Sorry Morgan," said Pearce, glancing back at him.

"It's all so cryptic," said Spencer.

Morgan came and stood behind them, reading over their shoulders. "'The end of the day came too soon'. Well, they clearly enjoyed bein' together."

Pearce nodded. "It's like they don't feel entirely like themselves when they're apart," she remarked.

"They wrote a cluster of others right after the first victim, Kim Groves, was killed," Spencer said, in Morgan's general direction.

"We need to figure out how they met," said Morgan. "There's gotta be somethin' in all this about their courtship."

"We think they're employing some kind of code – not like a cypher, more like linguistic signals," said Grace, as Morgan leafed through the clean set of entries they had printed for reference. "Clever move, if you think one day a couple of FBI agents will be picking through the blog."

Spencer shared a small smile with her. "Linguistic counter-measures," he said aloud. "'It all seemed so hopeless, but I've finally learned to rise above it'," he read aloud. "It sounds like William confessed he was feeling incomplete."

"He was," Morgan mused drily. "He didn't start killing until he met his soul mate."

"Sometimes you find someone who makes you want to let the darkness out," Grace reflected. "Someone who completes you – on whom you can depend. 'Faith should never be broken.'"

Reid nodded. "The longer they got away with it, the stronger their relationship."

"Sounds like they're not just obsessed with rape and murder," Morgan suggested. "They're addicted to one another."

"Coulda saved her."

All three of them looked around as Linden and the rest of the team came in, straight from the dump site. Linden looked particularly bitter; Spencer didn't blame him.

"There were no signs of his having a partner until now," Hotch said, in an attempt to mollify the man.

"I guess that's why he's so cocky," Linden mused.

"His arrogance is typical of a dominant personality," Hotch agreed. "He's found a submissive who's willing to kill for him."

"No, not a submissive," Grace said. "An equal. The diary entries suggest a level partnership."

"That's unusual," said Rossi, raising an eyebrow.

Pearce nodded. "Even so."

"The partner is a biter," said Emily. "We found marks on Missy DeWalt."

Spencer's eyebrows shot up. "That's new."

"They never did that before," said Morgan, surprised.

"Bite marks can be identified," Grace reflected. "The partner's slipping up in his excitement to help his friend out of prison."

"With William out of the picture he's changed his behaviour," said Hotch.

"Like Kenneth Bianchi," Spencer observed, glancing at Pearce.

 _Another parallel. So they feel as close as brothers. They won't be easy to break._

"Maybe the partner went back to something that's comfortable," Rossi proposed. "Something he's done before."

"We've got Garcia checking dental records against other cases," said Hotch. "It could be what we need to rattle them both."

Morgan handed the blog print outs to Rossi and the two of them went back to put some pressure on William with this new information. Hotch, Linden and Prentiss followed them, leaving Pearce and Spencer to keep digging.

0o0

Jordan leaned against the table, running her eyes over the new photos on the board, taken from rape folders that matched the second unsub's bite marks.

 _There is so much darkness in the world_ , she reflected.

While Morgan and Rossi interrogated Harris and she and Linden had released a statement to the press, Hotch and Emily had left Reid and Pearce to their mysterious scribblings and gone to interview the rape victims Garcia had identified. Now they had a line on the partner, and if they wanted to keep both these creeps off the streets they needed to find him and crack him quickly. Preferably before William Harris's wife posted bail for her husband.

"Connie Meyers described an anger-excitation rapist, just like William," said Emily.

"So we _are_ looking at two dominant personalities," Morgan said.

"Makes sense from a linguistic point of view," said Reid. "They're equally well-written."

"And equally voracious," added Pearce.

"Is that a big deal?" Linden queried, which Jordan appreciated because she didn't find it odd either.

"It's rare in criminal partnerships," Reid told him.

"If their personalities are the same, their lives probably mirror one anothers' as well," Emily explained.

"Harris goes to church, he's on the board of the PTA, coaches his daughter's soccer team, rarely drinks," said Linden, who had made it is business to know this guy inside and out.

"Sounds like a saint," Jordan reflected. _Apart from the rape and murder._

"With a dark side," said Hotch. "It's what he connected to in the partner. Prentiss and I will go talk to the family, see if they know who it might be."

The rest of the team shifted into a closer huddle, Linden included.

"Two alpha males won't be easy to break," Morgan reminded them.

"Especially as the partner is definitely following the investigation," said Jordan.

 _Or he wouldn't have left that poor girl out in the open like that._

"Let's do the talking for them," said Rossi.

Jordan looked at him, surprised. "You want me to put this out in the public?"

"We've got something better," Rossi told her and shook the print outs he was holding.

"Well, that's one way to get this guy's attention," Pearce mused.

"Why would he read it?" Linden asked. "He knows William's in custody."

"These men are addicted to each another," said Morgan. "Right now he needs a fix. The diary entries he shared are all he has to cling to."

"His partner wrote 'Faith should never be broken'," said Reid, sharing a speaking look with Pearce, who nodded. "A betrayal could devastate him."

"It could be what we need to drive a wedge between them," Pearce added.

"All we have to say is that William's cooperating," Morgan reasoned. "And hope he takes the bait."

0o0

Technically, Reid and Pearce were working on the letter to the partner, but Derek was at a loose end and he was fed up of glaring at Harris through the two-way glass of the interview suite. His colleagues were hunkered down over the guy's computer; as soon as they had sat down Reid had given the task of typing to Grace, which was generally quicker, given his dislike of technology. Both of them were keeping a careful eye on the language and precision of the piece.

They were working completely in concert today, and Derek was happy to see it, despite the circumstances.

It was about goddamn time.

"Okay, what've you got so far?" he asked.

"Uh, 'We were surprised that you injected yourself into the investigation,'" Reid quoted. "'You risked a lot in order to help William.'"

"And killin' Missy tells us how close you really are," he suggested. "It… must be devastating to know that William is here with us."

"Nice," said Grace.

"He's not gonna like that," said Reid. "It sounds like William's cooperating."

"And betraying him," Grace nodded, typing. "How about a header of their favourite line?"

Derek watched her write 'Faith should never be broken' at the top of the page before uploading the entry.

"Well, that's exactly what we want him to believe." He looked back up at the board. "The most entries followed the first murder," he pointed out.

"They were excited," Grace surmised.

"Yeah, William wrote most of them," said Reid. "Uh – uh – 'I wasn't expecting that type of gift, I wish time didn't take away all the pleasures of the day'."

"They've got to be talking about the first murder," Grace theorised, reading over the kid's shoulder.

Derek agreed. "I'll see if that's enough," he said and stalked back to the interview room.

0o0

"Listen to this," said Spencer, prodding Grace's arm with the bunch of papers. "'I feel like such an outsider. No one understands me. I watch them chase their little spawns. The same old conversations. Nothing stimulates me.'"

"A barbecue, maybe? Kids' birthday party?" she suggested, leaning over so she could get a closer look.

"Yeah," he agreed. "And somebody was not happy to be there."

"'I looked over and everything changed'," Pearce quoted. "'The only spark in my day.'"

"It's buried in a later entry," said Spencer, "but this has to be about the first time they met."

"I'll get the others," she said, grabbing his shoulder on the way past – a tactile acknowledgement of a job well done.

Distracted, he chewed his lip, following her progress through the office. Working with her today had felt so much the way they used to be that for a moment he had forgotten the long months of fighting. His fingers grazed the part of his shoulder she had touched, then the place on his jaw where a sizable bruise had been left. Today, with the haze of time mollifying the anger he had felt, he wasn't entirely sure that he hadn't deserved it.

 _The only spark in my day_ , he thought, frowning down at the notes she had been making in the margins of the blog entries.

"Reid, we need to figure out where that party was," said Morgan, as they all filed back in.

"Let's review one more time," he said, getting to his feet and dismissing such unhelpful thoughts. "I'm a serial killer writing to my partner, why do I keep a secret blog?"

"It's a safe way to relive your crimes," Hotch suggested.

"Uh, no one ever sees you together and – uh – no one ever overhears you talking," Emily added.

"You have to have some way to organise meeting up to commit your murders," said Grace. "Whose turn it is to pick up duct tape, or a victim. That kind of thing."

"I'd buy all that," said Rossi.

"Sounds like they take turns surprising each other," said Reid. "Uh, listen to this: 'I love the challenges, the timing is always perfect. Thanks for tonight. It was tough, but I figured it out. Nothing was gonna keep me away.'"

"What're you thinking?" Rossi asked.

"I don't know, something just…" he trailed off, frowning.

"They never write about a time," said Grace suddenly.

Surprised, he scanned the entries in front of him. She was right – there should be a system of dates and times in the blog and these were conspicuously absent.

"So, how'd they know when to meet?" Morgan asked.

Hotch pulled out his phone and called Garcia.

" _What've we got?"_ she asked, as soon as they were on speaker.

"All our victims were abducted at different times of day," said Hotch. "It was never consistent."

"One of them was even taken on Thanksgiving morning when she went to the market for her mom," Emily added.

" _Well, other than the blog there is nothing suspicious on Mr Sneaky's phone or computer,"_ Garcia told them. _"All texts, documents and files have been accounted for."_

Hotch frowned. "What did they do to communicate?"

"We're missing something," said Emily. "Okay, we know based on the language and the knowledge of the area that the partner was most likely born and raised in Florida."

"Alright, let's work with the theory that the partner lives in Sarasota," said Rossi.

"Most likely close enough for them to interact in otherwise innocent social situations," Grace put in.

"Well, we know they don't write," said Spencer. "The signal could be something visual – or it could be something audible."

Spencer glowered at the board. Something was still bothering him – if only he could put his finger on it. Perhaps it was the signal, buried in a way he couldn't translate.

"If it's visual that could be something like hanging a flag on their house," said Emily.

"Or wearing a particular colour of shirt," Grace agreed.

"And if it's audible they'd have to live close enough to each other to be able to hear it," Hotch added.

"Something audible," Spencer said, suddenly inspired. "Something you can hear… What if – what if they're not writing poetry to each other?" He asked, flicking through the papers on the desk at some speed, trying to find the line he was recalling. "What if they're writing… lyrics to a song?" He found the line and read it aloud: "Uh 'This feels so good, so free, so right'."

" _Give me something else!"_ Garcia demanded, typing hard.

"Uh – uh – 'It looks so right, it's all I need tonight'," Emily supplied.

There were a series of electronic beeps and then, " _I found it!"_ Music started flooding tinnily through the speakers of Hotch's phone.

He, Rossi and Emily looked up astonished.

"Garcia, that's it!" Hotch exclaimed. "That was playing when we pulled into the cul-de-sac."

Emily nodded, closing her eyes to try to remember. "It was coming out of a car!"

"That's the signal, that's how they knew to go back to Missy DeWalt," said Hotch.

"The partner lives nearby, that's gotta be where they met," Spencer said, looking at Grace. "A neighbourhood party!"

"It must have been just after they moved to the area," she agreed.

"Garcia, we need to know which neighbour it is," said Rossi urgently.

" _Gimme the parameters again."_

"We're looking for a white male," Spencer supplied.

"Married with children," said Hotch.

"He's either got a good steady job or he owns his own business," Emily added.

"He's lived in Florida his entire life," put in Rossi.

"Active in the community, like William – same age, too," Grace said.

There were a tense few seconds where they heard nothing except Garcia's frenzied typing, and then she spoke again. _"Living in close proximity to William there are seven white males. Five are married with children, two were born and raised in the Sunshine State – one is on disability, one owns a real estate business. Oh my God, he lives right next door! Stephen Baleman!"_

0o0

Spencer walked slowly through the park on Capitol Hill, musing over the culmination of their latest case.

It had been a close-run thing.

All take-downs had an air of danger, but this one had been particularly gnarly, though Spencer had remained at the police department throughout, monitoring activity over the radio.

Once the team had arrived at Stephen Baleman's house to discover both him and Andrea, William's teenage daughter, missing, they knew they only had a very short amount of time before Baleman took out all the rage and despair at his friend's supposed betrayal on her. They had appealed to Harris to save his daughter, but it had only been when his wife had slapped him across the face, admitted she had never posted bail and demanded that he try to get their little girl back that he'd begun to crack.

In the end he'd agreed to wear a wire and lead them right to the Marina, where they had raped and murdered all those women, and where Baleman was holding Andrea.

For a few minutes, they had thought he might have some genuine concern for his daughter, until they (and she, audible through the radio) figured out that he'd only come out to see Baleman one last time.

Addiction was a powerful thing.

Spencer had seen Andrea at the station, clinging to her mother and screaming at her dad as they led him away. It had been heart-wrenching. She had thought the world of her father and in the end she had read his guilt and his desperate need to be with his fellow psychopath right off his face.

The poor girl was never going to be the same.

Disconsolately, he kicked a stone.

As 'happy' endings went, this one hadn't been too bad, in terms of catching the bad guys and saving the latest victim, but the look on that kid's face when she ran to her mother's arms would stay with him forever.

Still, life went on, in a brutal, unstoppable juggernaut sort of way, and Andrea and her mother would survive somehow, and so would the DeWalt family, and so would Spencer, even if four nights out of every seven were sleepless.

Tonight he'd been out to a seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library on the murderous Borgia dynasty, but as soon as the talk finished he had ducked out of the reception that followed it, feeling like he wouldn't make great company with the words of Harris and Baleman's mutual delight in anger-excitation rape still running through his brain. He also felt a little out of place at the talk. Most people had gone with friends or a partner, and though he recognised one or two of the people there he didn't know them well enough to speak to them – nor did he have the social skill to spark off a conversation.

Grace had, every time they had visited a Folger lecture together, somehow managing to include him in a conversation with a complete stranger that he didn't find uncomfortable or awkward. It was a way she had, putting people at their ease, and something he envied.

 _Not much chance of seeing that in action out of work,_ he thought and frowned. There had been a time when seeing her had made his blood boil, but now… now he just missed her, with an intensity that bothered him.

Aware that a part of him was still angry at her – he had never been hit that hard by someone who he wasn't trying to arrest since High School (except that time Hotch had whaled on him to fool a particularly bitter LDSK, back when Gideon was still on the team) – he told himself that he shouldn't waste his time.

They had worked so easily and well together in Sarasota that it had brought some unhelpful memories to the surface, that was all there was to it.

 _Yeah,_ a voice in the back of his head scoffed, _and not a single member of the BAU would believe you._

He ignored it.

He was about to turn into the park proper when a couple passed him, laughing together, arm-in-arm, and he stepped out of their way to let them pass. It took a full minute before he realised one of them was _her_. Spencer span on his heel and stared after them. In the semi-darkness of the winter streetlights she hadn't recognised him, either. In the time it had taken for him to cotton on, the man she was with had put his arm around her waist, holding her close.

The way he once had.

For a few seconds it was strangely difficult to breathe.

Then Spencer's frown deepened. With his hipster man-bun and leather jacket, the man Grace was laughing with looked about the least likely candidate for a name like 'Lily' he had ever seen. Realising he and Morgan (at the very least) had been expertly played by probably several of their friends, he made a sort of angry hissing noise and then felt extremely silly for having done so.

 _Lily, indeed!_

Unaware of his presence or scrutiny, Grace and her boyfriend paused beside a bench a few hundred paces away, silhouetted by the streetlight above it, and Spencer watched as she took the man by the lapels and kissed him.

He squared his shoulders and turned away, feeling strangely nauseous. Suddenly the still night air seemed over-loud, as if there was too much for him to take in. He stalked away, feeling the desperate need to put as much distance between himself and the two romantics as he could. He didn't stop until he reached the reflection pool – and only then because he didn't feel like getting wet.

Spencer walked alongside it slowly, trying to sort the cacophony in his head into useful thoughts.

His chest felt weirdly hollow, like there wasn't as much of him as there had been before; he felt strangely off-balance. He glared out over the water, scolding himself. It was ridiculous. He had no reason to feel upset, he and Grace had made it abundantly clear to one another that there was no longer a place for the other one in their lives – romantically, at least. But he couldn't help it.

Heavily, he leaned on the railing by the edge of the pond, looking out across the lights sparkling diffusely over the frozen water.

 _That could have been me._

Hell, that _had_ been him, not so long ago. It felt like something out of another life, though he'd thought of the way she'd kissed him often enough when he'd been left to his own devices, trying to force her strawberry-and-tea smell and that rosey stuff she put on her lips out of his mind.

Spencer sighed.

Grace had looked so happy with her mysterious boyfriend. He realised sadly that he couldn't remember the last time he had seen her look that carefree. Even back in Vegas, before they had fallen out, the case had been weighing heavily on them both and her smiles (as much as he loved them) hadn't quite reached her periwinkle eyes.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge how pretty she had looked in that hot car-park, leaning against their SUV – or even tonight, honey coloured curls escaping madly from her homemade, ridiculously oversized bobble hat.

 _God I miss her,_ he thought, and then fervently wished that he hadn't, because admitting that to himself right at this moment was doing complicated things to his heart that he didn't want to acknowledge.

Feeling foolish and lost, he scrubbed a hand over his face, unable to work out when the anger burning in his chest had given way to such profound sadness. He even missed the way she drank her tea.

 _If this guy really makes her happy…_ he began, but there was no point lying to himself. The depth of the jealousy seeing how sweetly intimate she and her boyfriend were had elicited in him had taken him by surprise, but was impossible to ignore.

He wanted Grace to be happy, yes – but with some guy with muscles and a 'trendy' haircut?

Spencer scowled down at the ice below him.

"How am I supposed to move on and get on with things when I don't even know what I feel anymore?" he asked the empty air.

When no answer was forthcoming he gave up and set off again, heading back towards the city lights and the AMTRACK, hoping he wouldn't run into them. He was out of luck, however, spotting them strolling contentedly along the other side of the street.

Spencer turned down the steps to the station feeling numb and stupid.

 _You make me so damn confused._

0o0

 **And therein lies the rub.**

 **Well, here's the end of this one at last. Took longer than we all expected with all the stupid breaks I ended up taking, but still. Hopefully I've got a better handle on how I need to work now, so next year will be less chaotic : )**

 **I have to thank my awesome reviewers – you guys keep me going when I consider packing it all in! Enormous thanks to my fabulous regulars, Evanescencefan97, gossamermouse101, ahowell1993, tannerose5, LeopardFeather, DisneyLover100, slexieotpforever, ElisaC, xenocanaan, BlueMarian and, of course, MuggleCreator and Bones, who are in my corner on and off ffnet :) You don't know how much you guys do for my writing!**

 **Also to RedDragon395, huffle-bibin, Frida Claire, Guilia Elena, Irelandlover, ALPHAomega239, BlueBell phoenix, The Vitruvian Woman, Lizzy B and goldeneyes123, who have all contributed to the awesome of late!**

 **An honourable mention needs to go to The Glitterati for stopping me going mad and helping patch up plot holes, and to Jess-ter, Bones and MuggleCreator for reading bits through and telling me if they sound okay – love you all!**

 **Seriously, thank you guys. I love writing this series and it makes my little heart swell to know you lot enjoy it too.**

 **And a big thank you to all the regulars who've put up with my having to have breaks this time. Again. *sigh* Perhaps I should rename it 'Moments of Break'!**

 **So, Moments of Grace will be back with a whole new ficisode, 'This Is How We Do', on Friday the 12** **th** **of January (and I've already written half the first chapter so it really will be that day!), and should be more consistently regular next year.**

 **If you're into Hogwarts related chaos, I'm releasing a silly poem I wrote for Muggle Creator last year at the end of next week as a sort of Christmassy nod to the Harry Potter fic I'm currently failing to write.**

 **Meanwhile, I've published another book (!) and we're working on the third Superstars anthology, along with putting on a play what I wrote, so it's all go on the writing front, as usual. I'm also working on the sequel to House of Vines and a new book based on Scottish mythology.**

 **You can find my books, incidentally, over at the website with an address that has laurenknixon and a dot and a com :) I also have an author page on facebook if you fancy stopping by, under the same name, an Instagram account and a presence on Twitter (but I'm terrible at it).**

 **Until the next, dear friends! Have a very merry winter festival, whichever form it may take, and in a world where you can be anything, be kind 3**

 **Love and pickles,**

 **Parlanchina xx**


End file.
